


When sitting still and quiet becomes a protective duty

by JoCarthage



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Mental Health Issues, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-30
Updated: 2013-11-02
Packaged: 2017-12-16 15:19:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 24
Words: 59,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/863495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoCarthage/pseuds/JoCarthage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if Dean and Sam hadn't left Cas in the hospital in 7x16? This is the story of two men finding space inside themselves to hold each other up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to annecto-lien for her beta, all mistakes are my own. http://annecto-lien.tumblr.com
> 
> Also, things are really hard for Cas and Dean for a lot of this fic, and things get worse just when they look like they're getting better, but I promise *promise* promise that everything has a happy ending.
> 
> (PS I knocked this out so, if folks like it, I would have positive feedback to power me through this year's NaNo, so if you like it, please comment!)
> 
> Also, come say hi on tumblr! I'm generally at jocarthage.tumblr.com

Castiel shivered in clothes 3 people had died in. The hospital was quiet, the autumn sun set hours before. He knew he could draw the heat from the bricks on his side of the building, but even so small an exercise of his power had the potential for tragic consequences.

He breathed deep, and started sorting what he was feeling into different emotion-labeled boxes, a technique from his group therapist. Right now, Castiel felt: guilt, confusion, fear. He dug deeper, trying to order everything inside his head even as it slipped away, leaving him like the light was leaving the world.

\--

Dean couldn't sleep. He had an aching itch running up his spine, complimented by the creaking, crappy motel bed and the chill through the single-paned windows. He rolled onto one side and felt chest compressing, his shoulders pressing closer and closer together. He lay on his stomach and the must of the sheets stifled his breath. He switched to his back and his spine gave a twinge before his hips began complaining as his feet spread open. He flipped back over, slapped the pillow into submission, tucked his hand under to cradle his gun, and kicked at the blanket ineffectually.

Dean growled and sat up, swinging his legs over the edge of his bed. He spared a backwards glance to his brother, still sleeping like a medicated baby. He eased himself off the vocal springs, pulling his gun with him as he went, and swung his coat over his shoulder as he walked out the door, snagging the room keys as he went. The pressure of the keys in his palm hurt, but he dug into it, pulling in on the discomfort. His mind, now free of the oppressive dark of their room, began roving over the faults haunting his sleep.

_Cas's face, disoriented and terrified as Dean turned his back, ignoring the angel's jerky arm as it reached for his sleeve. That had been 3 weeks ago, when he’d last seen him._

Dean shook his head and strode off, determined to walk his thoughts into some kind of order. He started with that morning, just before his last silent confrontation, watching Cas twitch and flip on his creaking hospital bed. He smoothed the night air into his lungs, pulling in the freshness until his ribs ached with it and then letting it whoosh out.

He made a circuit of the parking lot, dead leaves and crappily-repaired asphalt mixing and slipping under his feet. He settled his shoulders into his worn-smooth leather jacket with a stiff twitch and started another circuit. He felt blue-blue eyes on the back of his neck and he picked up his pace, hips swinging. A flicker in the darkness to his right looked for an instant like a beige coat--everything was beige at night--and he flinched in towards the center of the lot. He stopped at the ice machine and muttered,

"Fuck it."

He bolted to the crap car of the week, digging his keys out of his deep pocket and fumbling them into the lock. He started it up fast, jacket bunched behind him. He only adjusted it smooth between his lower-back and the seat after he'd squealed wheels out of the parking lot, gravel pinging off its undercarriage.

He sped towards the highway, refusing to examine why he was pushing double the county side road speed limit. He rounded the corner fast into the driveway, trees giving way to a creepy white block building looming and glowing in the darkness ahead. He pushed in the brake before he made it to the main parking lot, unwilling to expose the car to the revealing fluorescents or his motivations to the night intake nurse, pulling it into the deeper shade under the surrounding copse.

He clicked off the motor and--stopped.

He breathed in the tacky air from ill-tuned air system, atmosphere feeling denser and denser the longer he sat fuming. He sat and stared into the barely visible trees. Their bare backs were tan as well.

Dean felt frustration rise up in him, boiling and hissing. Cas had fucked up. Cas had fucked _Sam_ up. Cas didn't get to have his sympathy; he hadn’t earn it. Dean started playing a montage of shitty things Cas had done in his head:

1) Being BFFs with Crowley,

2) Fucking Sam's head up,

3) Killing a bunch of motivational speakers,

4) Getting pissed at Dean when Dean tried to neutralize his crazy with Death,

5) Spying on him and Sam.

 _The one fucking time the guy gets a comic reference, it’s the end of the world_.

Dean kept seeing Cas's smooth, superior face when he told him he had no family; to bow down before him; that expression when he said this was going to be _so much fun_. The creeping runnels of Leviathan-ink running up his veins were exaggerated, cancerous in Dean's memory. He could see them pulsing in time with the backs of his eyelids, and when he saw Cas's manic grin he forced his eyes open, finding the moonlight almost gone and the half-light of dawn behind him.

He jerked the borrowed car’s ignition and backed up, creeping along the narrow way and driving at exactly the speed limit all the way on the road to the motel. He caught some coffee, the paper and bananas-- _ugh_ \--at the convenience store/gas station as an alibi for why he was gone when Sam woke up.

\--

Castiel was busily cataloging his feelings: guilt, confusion, fear. Guilt (the deaths of his brothers and sisters in heaven, scaring the other patients, imposing on a hospital staff who barely had time to care for humans), confusion (he’d strip-mined his Grace to save Sam, and he’d gained a faulty memory system and a host of terrors in return), fear (never seeing Dean again, who he would hurt next, his brother lurking at the edges of his vision).

Castiel liked these 3 categories, but a moment later, when he tried to reach back into his memory for them, they were jumbled. Was it Hate first? Hate for the Leviathans, for Dean for leaving him, for Sam for gifting him with this disability? Then, Love? Love for the world he'd nearly destroyed and the God he still sought and the friends who never truly left him. Then—Itchiness? Castiel experienced a lot of itchiness in these borrowed and thrice repaired clothes.

He kept his body in the appearance of sleeping, as it soothed the nurses and kept Meg from bothering him, but in reality he slept only a few minutes since he’d come to this place and laid down late into the first night. He assumed the far-off sound of a car’s engine was an inflection of his imagination. He pressed himself into the mattress to try for true sleep.

He wasn’t seeing Lucifer or trapped in Sam’s memory, but this meant his physical discomforts were intensely present. The thin white cotton sheet scratched over the plastic-wrapped mattress and the dawn was not yet breaking.

Castiel wished Dean would return. He'd left in the morning 22 days ago with a pressed hand to his shoulder and a cold word about keeping himself together. Castiel closed his eyes and, pressing away the scattered feathers of his death-marked friends, he sank into a future hope-memory of Dean.

Castiel imagined: _Not just a hand pressed to his shoulder, but an arm across his back. Not a cold word, but a warm one. A Dean who understood, didn't just say he understood but really understood, how hard Castiel had tried._

\--

Dean was reading the local paper at the round motel room table when Sam finally roused himself from his uninterrupted sleep. The coffee was tepid, but Dean had no interest in stopping Sam from catching up on sleep from what had been a grinding few days. Dean circled another probable-possible-potential case in thick red marker, making the paper seem more informative than it had been.

"We got something?" Sam said, lurching around the bed into the crappy pine chair across from him, barely reaching vertical between his destinations.

Dean nodded, feeling the bullshit rising: "A couple of possible ghosts--these two died violent deaths," he tapped the pen cap on two obits, "so it's worth it salting-and-burning their remains."

Sam exuded dubiousness and Dean plowed on: "Then there's this: a couple a town over found 20 dead kittens in the last two months on their property."

"Dead how?" Sam leaded forward.

"Froze to death," Dean muttered.

Sam sat back again. "Dean, it's October in Ohio. Of course they froze to death."

"Well, what about this one: two teen boys found graffiti at a local park that the paper calls 'satanic'?"

Sam was looking at Dean intently, and drew in a breath before he paused, looked over Dean's face with his eyes widening a bit, and then said: "Alright, you get the kitten farm and I'll cover the graffiti. We'll meet up at the graveyard at midnight if not before then. Now," he stood up and stretched, his long-ass arms nearly tapping the ceiling, "I'm going to shower."

He dug around in his bag, pulling out handful after handful of hair product and body wash and crap. Jumbling it all in his arms, but still face still pointing down at his bag, he said,

"Dean--"

"Yeah, Sammy?"

Sam glanced behind himself at Dean, and then sighed.

"Nothing. See you in 20."

"45 more like. How do you know the Leviathans haven't put anything in the product?"

Sam rolled his eyes but looked down a little less happily at his armload.


	2. Chapter 2

20 minutes in with the young couple on the big farm with the dead kitties, Dean got it: there was an old tom in the neighborhood who had hooked a bunch of local ladies up with kittens in late late summer, and the mama cats had all decided to have them in the couple's little-attended barn. Then they'd died, like kittens do when it gets cold.

Dean had met some of the mama cats, they'd twined around his ankles, and he thought he'd gotten more out of petting their soft fur than was entirely decent. His cover had been "Derek Smith" of the "USDA: Feline Department" which was the most boring shit he could think of. No more teddy bear doctors, no more band refs, no more fun since the Leviathans took over.

 _Asshats_.

Dean had agreed to meet up with Sam for a late diner dinner, and so in the 13 hours between when he got done with the farm family and then, he drove to every town within 25 miles in every direction and get copies of their local papers. He chatted up the girls and boys working at the coffee shops and gas stops he'd bought them from, looking for any kind of lead.

Dean'd dropped Sam off at the park with the graffiti in the small downtown. When he'd last heard from him it had been a texted insistence that the satanic verse couldn't be dangerous because it was all copied from Marilyn Manson songs. Seemed reasonable. Knowing Sam could text him if he wanted a ride, Dean snuck back to the hotel to look over his collected papers for clues.

He wanted Sam to walk in and have at least a week of cases in the vicinity. He started plowing through, playing a YouTube loop of "Simple Man", pausing when he had to parse some particularly ghastly writing.

When Dean had started this gig 25 years ago--more if you count watching over Dad's shoulder, but 8 had been the first time John had let him try to pick his own case--newspapers had been small, gritty, and local. They covered cow births and income tax changes and weddings and funerals and construction permit disputes. Now, of the 15 papers he'd collected, 12 of them were owned by the same multinational syndicate and 85% of the content which wasn't ads was identical. And 35% of the content was ads.

People still had lives--cows still gave strange births, taxes still changed, people got married and died and had babies--but newspapers didn't cover it.

People separated their lives from the news. The news was what happened on TV: if Dean wanted to find out what was going on in a town, he needed to go onto Facebook, look at YouTube tags, or talk to people in a shop. Facebook was harder to crack since people had started getting real about their privacy settings, but nothing could ever stop an over-weaned basement-dweller from posting small-town dare-devilry on YouTube.

Which is how Dean found out about the ghost-house.

On a channel titled "hotboxing293" Dean caught a screen cap of what looked like a spectral illusion. He clicked through and after a primary ad for some candidate's campaign, he got to the video. Shaky-cam: check. Shittily-muffled-but-excited teen voice: check. Terrible lighting: check.

Everything in it looked like 1) a hoax, 2) another uneventful look-I-saw-a-light-oh-it-was-a-reflection-of-my-flashlight-in-a-bit-of-smashed-glass until the screaming woman flashed before his eyes, stretched out her hand and shimmered out.

Dean put the link to the video in an open email and kept looking for the town, and then zip code and then state's tags. He found more graffiti--a NIMBY jerk had taken to documenting all of the local color, overlaying his racist rants on top of the jerky footage--lots of high school football outtakes, some local teen girls' video diaries (which he clicked off quickly because 16 can get you 20), and lots of scruffy dogs doing half-assed tricks.

He took a break from his screen, going back to reading the monotonous news stories and circling the best leads in his red pen. Once he'd gone through all of them, he went back to the computer and began building a case around the haunted house.

He found it had last been occupied over a decade ago. He found there were 4 confirmed deaths and half-a-dozen disappearances--particularly heartbreaking was the blog of the local Mom whose son had disappeared at the house 2 years ago. She wrote constantly about her work to find him, her new connections with national missing and exploited children groups, her increasingly infrequent and increasingly frustrating meetings with local police. He got details of the death and disappearance, photos of the missing boy, and information on the house from her post, and enough second-hand grief to last him for the night.

He decided to pause his search there for now: it was the best lead he had and would last them a few days if he stretched it and insisted on doing all of the work in pairs. He looked at his watch and saw he still had 3 hours until he was supposed to meet Sam.

Without ever making a conscious decision, he got up, shoved on his jacket, locked up the motel room, got into the car and drove to the hospital.

Again, he slowed to a crawl as soon as he got past the gate, and again he crept into the space between the trees. He parked and popped off the engine, but at its first cooling click he wrenched the ill-hung door open and planted his feet on the unthawed soil. He got up, bracing his arms on the door and body frame, turning to look at the expanse of white wall. He breathed in the cooling dusk air and froze when he saw movement in one of the hospital windows.

It was a white-jacketed nurse, or patient, he couldn't tell, standing and staring out of the half-window. He wondered if they'd moved Cas's room and if so, if the angel had a window he could see the sky out of.

Dean wondered what it would be like to fly without fear, to have wings the size of buildings and the choice to keep them always folded, always hidden. He wondered how much it hurt, to see the sky and not be in it.

He'd wondered these things when he'd first met Cas, when he wasn't shaking in unbearable terror at the threat of being tossed back into hell, and wondered them again when humanity had been creeping on his friend's skin like a sunburn. He'd always hoped it didn't hurt too much to be envesseled, that Cas didn't ache constantly for the sky and the clear voices--and clear choices--of Heaven. Dean hoped flight and clarity weren't things Cas resented him for taking away, though he knew he had no right to that hope.

The white-wearing person stepped back from the window, leaving the face of the hospital blank eyed. A crack in the forest jolted him from his reverie and he checked his watch, seeing he still had some time before he met Sam. He glanced again at the building, and then turned away, getting back into the car and driving below the limit the whole way back to the motel room.


	3. Chapter 3

Castiel sank back into his one, thin, scratchy pillow. When he tried very hard, could imagine it was Dean's chest.

Castiel knew every dip, every line, every follicle of Dean's surface. He knew his clothes less intimately, but could imagine the creak of his leather jacket, the scritch of his nubbed-up flannel, the ribbing of his undershirt. Castiel surrounded himself with Dean's sweat-and-dirt smell. He could have drawn an original memory of it from his brain memory as easy as breathing, but he feared not finding it, so instead he remembered the smell that miased around his reclaimed trench coat.

He felt Dean's heat, his broad chest and cool jacket. He added motion to his fantasy, the smooth-and-unhitching up-and-down of Dean's chest as he breathed for Cas. Castiel turned sideways into the pillow, imagining his hips sliding between Dean's, bodies contorting for each other comfortably, the physics of comfort as easy as Dean's slow breaths.

Last, he added the feeling he imagined he would feel if his future Dean were here. Frustrated, warm, tense, contented, open, welcomed, enclosed, safe. He wrapped those feelings around himself.

Castiel had never had this experience. He drew the fantasy from observation, correlation, and imagination. He'd watched Dean care for Sam and borrowed that observed kindness. He'd watched Dean make love with Lisa, and marveled at his body and been saddened by his restraint. Castiel hoped Dean would never have to hide his failings if they became intimate in that way.

Castiel felt the pressure of sleep compress his body. He'd never slept before as an angel, but something of the brokenness of his memory system needed his consciousness to be absent to reconstruct itself. He focused on the feeling of tiredness.

It was an ache in his bones, ringing up his fingers and around-and-around his spine. It felt like a bruise was forming on every tendon, but he knew it was just exhaustion. He also felt pressure, a steady downward push.

It reminded him of how dog keepers got their charges to sit and stay sat--with a gentle palm on the spine and upper neck. He felt the pressure pushing his shoulders closer together, compressing his clavicle. The angel flopped onto his stomach, one hand curling around his own hip and the other flat on the bed beside his face.

Dean always slept with his hand under a pillow, grasping a gun and smoothing his thumb along the stock where no one could see. He always smoothed his thumb 5 times, the same number of times his father used to smooth his hair from his forehead when he was too small to be embarrassed at the attention.

Dean and Sam often got twin beds in their ever colorful and decrepit motel rooms. There had been a Sunday when they had lucked into a suite and they had each gotten their own rooms with queen beds. In that case Dean had adopted a position Castiel thought of as "starfish."

While he was starfishing, Dean's hand remained under the pillow but far from his head, his legs speed and hips open. When Dean was particularly stressed or afraid, Castiel knew he slept on his stomach with the top of one foot tucked into the bottom of the other--closed off in every way.

Castiel struck a compromise between the forms of sleep he’d seen Dean adopt. He starfished as much as he could on the small and creaky cot, keeping his knees and ankles apart, but tucked his hand under his pillow and his head. As he spiraled down to sleep--or simple unconsciousness, as he had no proof he experienced REM cycles--he once again remembered the smell of Dean's hair and jacket and self and let its weight augment the thin sheet he clutched to his breast.

Behind the angel's eyes, the wings of his brothers were still tattooed, the smell of his victim's blood threatened to overwhelm the shape of Dean's body in his mind's eye, and the sound of his friend's disappointed carried him to uncertain sleep.

\--

Dean lay in his bed back at the motel, tossing again. He had the sneaking suspicion Sam was awake and just being polite, so he stared out the window and listed reasons he was pissed that Cas was bothering him:

  1. Cas sinking The Titanic for them;
  2. Cas refusing to ask him for help;
  3. Cas breaking under the strain of the Leviathans.



Each of these images came with a clearer and clearer close-up of the angel's face--needing approval, stubborn, hurt. At each flash of blue eyes, Dean could feel his rage building, knotting his shoulders and squeezing his veins until they pumped high and tight in his arms and chest.

He flipped on his back, determined to stay still until he was sure Sammy was asleep. He breathed deep, filing his lungs and watching his stomach tent the sheets. He listened hard for Sam's breathing--his sleeping noises as familiar to him as the sound of Cas's wings had once been. He counted Sam's breaths, noticing a strange hitch as he got full of air. Dean humphed: that was the sound of someone carrying extra weight.

He's slept with this one curvy girl once, in Denver. She'd been a grad student in Anthropology who had gotten stuck explaining dining rituals of a rural African tribe to him after her professor avoided his attentions. They'd started at her downstairs coffee shop, looking over a low-table at each other, then sitting beside each other, nudging closer and closer together at her laptop, then up in her apartment living-room, then her kitchen table, and then her bed. He'd watched the dawn rise over her shoulder and liked the look of a body not stripped down to its narrowest uses.

She'd been beautiful, but the way she breathed made it clear she was exactly the way she was: peaceful in herself and a little heavy.

He'd never had the luxury of breathing like that--every meal he'd eaten with Lisa had been fast and savored, like a probable last meal. Every possible dessert that year left him with the need to work out, to spend extra hours at the site. Every moment relaxing felt like a dumb bet he would never need to rely on his body to save someone else's life.

Where Sam had gotten the time and energy to leave the approach to life he'd been raised to, Dean didn't know. Dean had assumed, expected that Sam had been unable to leave the hunting life behind as he had, but if Sam's breathing was any indication, he'd sunken far deeper his fantasy normal life than he'd imagined in these past weeks staying in the same town in Ohio. They’d become, _comfortable_.

Dean flipped onto his stomach, digging his hand under his pillow to touch the handle of his gun. He settled a little at its cold touch, relaxing into the still-familiar feel of his fingers on the grip, his thumb rubbing on the pommel. He breathed into the pillow and thought about falling asleep, willed the feeling into his knees and hips and shoulders. It swept in and swept out, leaving him twitchy and pissed at himself.

He continued to hold himself into the mattress, forcing himself to stay still until he heard Sammy's breath fade into its nearly silent deep-sleep thrum. Then he got up, toed on his boots and yanking his laces tight over his foot-roof and ankles. He yanked his jacket on and--on a whim--stole the novel Sam had bought at the library extras sale and on second thought, two beers.

He got into the crappy car, and winced a bit for her when he heard the gravel pinging off its undercarriage as it bumped down the too-steep curb-cut and out onto the highway. Dean found himself speeding and feeling the shifting reminder of deja vu.

He cut the car's the lights when he entered the property and drove into the parking lot this time, parking in the darkest corner under the trees. He propped his feet up on the passenger dash and held the book open on his knees, squinting in the moonlight. He started where Sammy had left off, keeping his thumb on the page as he turned through.

He came in on a scene with a kid called Joshua hitting a lizard in the head with a rock, then putting it in his mouth to bring it back to life. Except the kid's name was Jesus, not Joshua.

Dean flipped the book closed-- _Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal_ \--and snorted. _Trust Sammy to pick up religious satire for pleasure-reading._ He took a breath, listening to the ticking down of the engine and the buzzing of the florescent parking lot light. He opened it again and kept reading. He’d just gotten to the part where Jesus throws his parents into a frenzy by disappearing with the scholars when Dean felt staring eyes and looked up.

There was a figure in the same window, staring out--staring at him. He looked, squinting, eyes tired from reading in the low moonlight but couldn't tell the gender or even hair color of the staring figure. He stared back and felt a barricaded internal door fly open and his thoughts started pouring out at the figure.

_If you're Cas, I'm sorry, ok? I'm sorry I can't be there. I'm sorry I'm so pissed. I'm sorry you fucked up--I fucked you up. I'm sorry I'm not sorry you're crazy and Sam isn't, with his fat-man breathing and his girl hair products. I'm sorry you're sick and hurting and I'm sorry I have nothing left that could ease it for you. I hate you for hurting Sam. I hate me for letting you inside my guard to do it, I hate me for letting you hurt me like this. I hate you._

Dean squeezed his eyes shut and started rifling through his clothes, looking for the key to this stupid car. As he peeled out of the driveway, in his rear-view mirror he saw the figure in the window sway towards the window and a white-sleeved but no less pale hand raised up, palm out, and pressed to the glass. He wrapped a last thought around himself as the cool night air trickled and gushed through the cracked window:

_Not yet. I can't. Not now._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sam's book that Dean is borrowing is one of my favorites: Lamb: the Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamb:_The_Gospel_According_to_Biff,_Christ's_Childhood_Pal


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains some pretty nasty descriptions of domestic violence, not against or by any canon characters, but it could absolutely be triggering, so if violence against women or familial violence is bad for you, skip to the bottom note where there's a quick summary. There's a brief mention of suicide as well.

Dean didn't remember much of the drive back, except Sammy's book falling to the floor and the shit car nearly rolling down into a ditch trying to get it up off before it stuck. He lost the bookmark in the mess but at the flash of headlights coming towards him he pulled back into driving position and kept his hands at 9 and 3 for the rest of the trip back. He parked and threw on the overhead light, breathing harshly in the compact silence.

He kept flashing onto that figure with its outstretched palm, fingers strangely well-defined in his memory in a way they hadn't been in real life. He remembered the feeling of the path the words pouring out of him dug, sweeping bits of his hate out into the chilled night air.

He pulled Sammy's book into his lap, completely certain he won't be able to sleep any better after seeing Cas stranded in that place than he had been before, and followed Joshua all the way until he left the Holy Land for eastern mystics. _Weird shit_. _Funny, but weird_. Dean thought, flipping it closed. He fished around under the chair for the bookmark, but came up empty.

He sighed, expecting an epic bitch face, but got out of the car, hips aching from the modern-and-crappy seat design. He lurched into the motel room and crashed into a mercifully dreamless sleep, though he awoke feeling haunted by blue eyes.

\--

Castiel felt so cold and the quiet was eating at his mind. He felt Dean leave and felt what had been holding him upright, keeping him standing, pull away. He fell to a crouch by the heater and thought of the dead people who’d worn his scrubs before him.

Sandra Polluck had been a thrice-beaten wife, but her history of abuse masked subtle hatred for all things green bred of a chemical imbalance in her brain. She had been doing laundry in the yard, dipping her sore back down and up, rinsing clothes and wringing them over the line as the fresh fall air had blown by. Her husband raged up to her, and back-handed her into the tub, where he held her until she passed out.

The brain damage had left her changed, but she was always a quiet woman and the people in her church occupied with the preacher's daughter's scandalous red dress, so it was some weeks before anyone noticed. In the end, it wasn't Sandra who was noticed, but her daughter Melanie. Sandra had begun sending Melanie to school in tattered and stained clothing, her wild brown hair unbowed and unbraided. The teacher came by the scold Sandra, and noticed the woman seemed quieter than usual, but left again without saying anything to anyone.

When Melanie dropped out of school to follow her mother around the house, keeping her from falling into things, the preacher came by. He saw the bruises on Sandra's face, courtesy of her second beating, this time with a mop handle, but chose to focus on her daughter's scholastic failures. Sandra promised to put Melanie back in school. A few quiet months later, her husband was drawn up into the war, and had left the women in his life with little money but less trouble.

Melanie had made it to high school and could tie her own boys and braids. A boy she brought home pushed her, and she fell into a tree where Sandra saw her. Sandra ran out, screaming, and the boy hit her, and hit her, and hit her until she bled the green grass red. She lost site in one eye and then lost her freedom when Melanie tried to drop out again to care for her.

The new preacher had been a psychologist in a previous life and referred Sandra for care at this hospital and harangued Melanie's fraternal aunt into giving her a safe bed and steady supply of food for her until she made it through high school.

A small white van came for Sandra before her last bruises had faded, and the moment her foot lifted off of the red dirt of her front yard was the last she would ever stand on her own two feet. Sandra lived for 7 years in the facility, sinking harder and harder into her delusion and delirium. She was treated for many things, none of which were brain injuries stemming from husband-violence and a broken heart, and eventually she ate an entire bottle of anticoagulants.

How the smock he wore had gotten to its current level of cleanliness again, Castiel had no idea, after the kind of death Sandra had died.

Ronnie Cumbers had never lived outside of his own mind. He’d been born different, in a time where that was enough to warrant commitment. He’d grown up and grown old in facilities like this one, cared for and guiltlessly neglected by his birth family by turns. He’d enjoyed playing poker with the other patients and had carefully grown beans by the back fence.

He’d died of a small mistake by a new nurse, a mix up of his medications and food over a few weeks. No one really noticed and his family had him cremated to spare expense.

The last and most recent death was of Jill Hammerlog. She’d been a violent woman, victimized by nothing but her own temperament and choices. She’d had as comfortable a childhood as anybody in the town, but hated the people around her.

She cheated and scammed her way through high school and then became the bookkeeper for the city council, by some ploy no one totally understood. But then, late in life and before anyone could track how many checks she’d made out from the county account in her own name, she suffered an aneurism.

The money she stole was untraceable, and so though she’d had an untaxed million in a bank 2 states away, when her mind and memory fled along the tiny blood clot, she’d been left to depend on the city she’d scammed. They’d placed her here, where she received some but not the best care, until she died a small, unnoticed death.

Castiel wore their deaths with those of the thousands he’d killed. He couldn’t atone for those, couldn’t throw his mind or guilt-feelings open wide enough to encompass their suffering, but he dove into the details of these people’s lives: exactly the bones Sandra’s husband broke; what colors Ronnie’s brain had substituted—when Castiel was bored as he nearly always was he would view the world as Ronnie; exactly how much interest Jill had earned in her secret bank account.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Summary for those who had to skip the depictions of domestic violence: Dean goes back to the hospital to watch. Meanwhile, Castiel remembers the three patients of the hospital who died in the scrubs he's wearing: Sandra Polluck, who survived domestic violence and later committed suicide, Ronnie Cumbers, a man who disabilities who died of medical neglect, and Jill Hammerlog who stole more than a million dollars from the local city government and hid it in a bank without telling anyone where she put it, before losing her faculties to a blood clot and dying of old age.


	5. Chapter 5

Sam was strangely quiet over dinner, giving Dean the barest outlines of his day. He'd heard from the locals that the graffiti was the pastor's son having a teen moment, gone to check it out, found nothing harmful, and then--

"I said I went to a library, Dean."

"For 13 hours?"

"Yes, for 13 hours. There’s good research there about Biblical history and the way Levia--"

Dean stiffened, and went into a fast-paced review of the haunted house case, selling its interesting points perhaps a little harder than absolutely necessary.

Sam only nodded, eyes fixed on Dean's face throughout.

They finished their bill, paid their tab, and walked back to the car.

Dean had transferred their army shovels and salt bags with every new car, knowing it was worth the back pain for the security in having his tools with him. He drove them to the sound of the static-infused classic rock station to the grave site, where they found the two locals who had died bloody.

Sam started off digging at one while Dean worked at the other. Fresh corpses were the worst, and Dean was thoroughly pissed at himself for choosing this case as his first delaying tactic when he heard a yell behind him. _Crap. Groundskeeper._

He and Sam took off, dropping their shovels and kerosene and booking it in opposite directions. Dean was running full-tilt over the grass when a low gravestone caught him mid-calf and sent him sprawling. He glanced behind him to see the groundskeeper closing in when a hard little hand jerked him up and tossed him into a crypt. He heard Sam yelling, getting the guy's attention and distracting him, while he grappled with the surprisingly soft body behind the saving-hand. A slap and a face-full of black hair later he saw: _Meg?_

"What's your problem, idiot? Don't like having you ass saved by a girl?"

He shoved her back, then grunted when she used her demon strength to pin him up the wall, forearm across his throat:

"Here I am, taking my nightly break from protecting poor little Cas from the demon baddies and who do I find pissing in my pond but the assholes who left him there to rot? Got something to say, Winchester? Or are you just going to gulp like a itty-bitty fish."

She threw him down on the ground, standing wide-stanced over him in disgust.

"Fuck you," Dean said, "It's not like I had to beg you to take him. You're safer there with him,"

"I'd be safer anywhere in this town with a former angel of the Lord all powered up and willing to save me. What I am doing, not in my own interest but in Cas's and I assume in yours, is keeping that little angel out of the papers. You know he broke 15 lights today, screaming? I had to blame it on another patient and whip on some memory-fucks to keep him off the charts."

Dean's heart met his gut at the word "screaming," but he plowed on.

"It's still in your best interest, don't give me any of that altruistic crap."

She was drawing a breath to retort when her phone went off--

"We'll just have to leave this for later--they're calling me back early for my shift. I guess my favorite patient is having nightmares again,"

She flounced away as Dean coughed and got to one knee. She propped the mausoleum door open and said, head turned slightly back:

"He screams for you Dean. Because of you."

And then she was gone.

Dean clambered up and headed out to find Sam. He caught him standing over the unconscious body of the groundkeeper—given the ding on Sam’s head and the shovel by the man’s supine body, it had been a knockout of last resort.

They finished digging, then salted-and-burned the bodies, frying bacon smell ensuring Dean would stick to his carbs for the next few days. They didn’t talk, except to confirm they were heading back to the motel, and then that they would both try to wake up a few short hours later when dawn visited.

Dean plowed face-first into his pillow, hand tucking his gun under his pillow and after toe-ing off his boots, his foot resting in the cradle of his other foot. He slept fitfully, the smell of burning and the sounds of what he imaged Cas’s screams would sound like following him in his dreams.


	6. Chapter 6

Sam waited until Dean drove off the next morning to slip out the side-door of the library and flip open his phone. He tapped in:

_How’s the patient?_

And then pocketed the slim grey plastic and started off, walking into the woods between the library and the highway. Deep enough the sound of cars was muffled and he was no longer in eye-shot of the peeping patrons, he pulled out some chalk and began sketching Enochian symbols on the trees. He was just finishing the curve on the drux when his pants buzzed.

_Rough stuff, honey pants. The night’s casualties include 3 lightbulbs and a hunk of my hair._

Sam frowned and paused before typing:

_Worse?_

The reply came quick:

_Nah sweet cheeks, better.  He apologized after throwing me around this time,_

Sam nodded at the message and slipped the phone back into his pocket. He finished the inscription and then added a dab of blood to the intersections. He’d no sooner finished applying bodily-fluids when Inias was standing, still and silent behind him.

Sam turned, drawing himself to his full height. Before he could begin, the angel interrupted:

“Why did you summon me? I have important work in heaven.”

“Castiel is alive.”

Everything froze, the irritation dripping from Inias’s face as it filled up from the bottom with wonder.

“Where—how—when—can I—“

Sam stepped towards him but paused when the angel’s eyes widened and his hands came up.

“He’s sick, he can’t—he’s not who you’re expecting. But, I think he gave us enough to get rid of these Leviathans. I think you need my help.”

Inias quirked his head and scoffed, “I need nothing from a human, particularly a former demon-blood-sucking spit of dust.”

Sam let that roll off him _, water off a Wendigo_. “Castiel survived the Leviathans tearing him from the inside, and may have information about them. But he needs to heal first before we can ask him about it. For now, I want to share information.”

“I must consult with my superiors,” Inias said, already inching towards one of the wide breaks in the circle.

“Fine. I’ll summon you again tomorrow, come if you want to work together. If you’d rather sulk, well, you’re not the only angel in my playbook.”

Sam watched as Inias stepped just outside the perimeter of the loosely constructed circle and then vanished in a rush of wings and returning air. He popped his phone out of his pocket to check his messages—3 from Meg:

_Dean’s here. Again._

Then:

_He’s just sitting there, staring at his lap and moving his hand a few times a minute. Is he jacking it verrryyyy sloowwwlllyyyy???_

Then:

 _In the E.R. Clarence couldn’t hold his temper and so held my head into the wall. I didn’t get a chance to clean up before the orderlies saw me. This isn’t working_.

Sam didn’t reply, there was nothing he could really say to correct her. He hunched his shoulders against the cold and walked back into the library to bide his time and research as much as he could gather about the mythical history of the Leviathans and the angels that followed them.

\--

After dropped Sam off at the library, Dean drove by a donut place, but remembered the Levi’s penchant for messing with the food supply, and kept on driving.

He drove without pausing or stopping into the hospital parkling-lot, but the sight of the entrance was too much for him, and he sat in the car for a half a Zeppelin tape. He hadn't intended to leave the motel room, then he hadn't intended to leave the highway, then the crap car. When he finally got out, he walked quickly to the white wall the window where he’d seen the man in white standing and huddled there, arms shoved in his pockets to keep out the cold and ears getting used to the quiet and the soft murmurs of the patients speaking near the windows.

\--

"DEAN!" Dean jerked out of his standing mid-morning nap from where he was, yeah, lurking, under what he thought was Castiel's window. His first instinct was to run but he sure as hell wasn't leaving this bit of wall he was holding up.

Cas screamed again and Dean found himself sprinting to the expectedly-locked hospital staff entrance, yanking and yanking on them until he saw the security guard coming, when an ounce of his self-preservation kicked in and he ran back, behind the bushes and by the wall, to the bit of well-stomped earth under Castiel's window. He threw a look up towards the window, seeing a few well-mounted pipes and some useful decorative moulding, and started climbing. He could hear Cas screaming, words becoming clearer:

"NO! I must reach the righteous man! YOU will NOT STOP ME." Dean climbed faster. There wasn't much Cas couldn't do in his right mind and Dean didn't know what would stop him when he wasn't. He reached his hand up farther for the next handhold, driving his muscles faster.

He reached the locked window, pulling his shoulders onto the sill where he saw Meg standing in the doorway, arms akimbo and blood on her face, and a be-robbed Castiel with rage in every line of his thin body looking like he was about to get his smite on.

Dean tried to catch Meg's eye, but she was deathly concentrated on the pissed seraph in front of her-- _fair_ \--and so Dean shifted all of his weight onto half of one hand and the toe of his left boot and raised a cautious hand to knock on the window. At first, he thought they hadn't heard but then a look like relief and then horror bloomed on Meg's face and she began shaking her head mouthing  _No_  as Castiel slow-as-breathing turned around. When his eyes caught Dean's, the hunter nearly fell off the building.

Castiel's eyes were red.

Castiel flashed in beside Dean on the sill, and gripping his arm he vanished them back into the room. Meg was still standing in the door, mute and face white and blank. Castiel's grip on Dean's arm was digging in, but he was just holding onto him, staring. Dean turned into the angel, until their faces were too close for comfort and hissed:

"Get out of him."

Castiel laughed, and it was nothing like the sweet, slightly disoriented laugh he'd given Dean when he'd eaten his cheeseburgers: it was all cold cackle.

"Castiel's not here right now. It's Luci all the way, baby. Wanna see?"

Dean yanked his arm back, succeeding in both gaining his freedom and tearing bruised runnels down his arm.

"Cas, I know you're in there. Come on, man."

Quietly, low enough that Dean only heard it in the sudden quiet of the darkened room, he heard Meg speed-chanting something in Aramaic.

Castiel turned to her with a sneer, but just as he was raising his crooked palm, she finished and he sunk to his knees, his head bowed and shoulders crunched. Meg was at his side as Dean stood, thunderstruck.

"It's alright, Cas, you didn't hurt anyone." Meg tried to shoo Dean away with her eyes, but he stayed stock still. Castiel slowly, slowly, slowly raised his eyes and the pure anguish in their clear blue depths was almost as painful as the red had been.

"Dean," he whispered, then coughed, "You shouldn't be here."

Dean started backing away, the sight of Castiel on the floor tearing tectonic rifts through his midsection.

Meg was shaking her head, directing him with her eyes to the window. Castiel kept his eyes on the floor after seeing Dean backing away, his shoulders hunched around his ears and his face stone still.

“I, I can’t,” and Dean was out the door, past the crouched forms, running down the hallway and to the nearest fire escape. With every pound of his feet he heard Castiel’s broken laugh, with every blink saw his red eyes, and with every breath brought the taint of that room into his pulmonary arteries.


	7. Chapter 7

Dean snuck out of their shared motel room with stealth he hadn’t bothered with in months, and crept the car out of the lot with no lights on. He was breathing low and hard by the time he made it to the hospital, Castiel’s shaking body occupying the peripheries of his every thought. Car in the lot, he yanked the parking break up as he opened the door and marched to the near-side of the hospital wall where he’d climbed up earlier.

Keeping his kind blank of all self-analysis, he scaled the wall and hung by two fingers and an elbow to tap on the window. He got no response and was about to tap again when Castiel’s peering face appeared at the window. Dean motioned for him to come and get him, but Castiel’s eyes widened impossibly and he backed away so Dean could barely see him, shaking his head back and forth “No.” Dean tried to insist but Castiel backed further away, gesturing to the fire escape.

Dean couldn’t believe it would be open, and it wasn’t, until a certain blond-headed faux-nurse hitched her hip against it and stared him into the room and up the stairs to the patient’s room.

Castiel’s door was near the end of the hall, shut and blank. Dean paused and could barely stand with the weight of his doubts, but he braced a knuckle on the door and pressed it and lifted away a few times. Castiel opened the door and they stood, staring, for a long minute. Then Castiel stepped back, and then back again, faltering and tripped into sitting on his thin cot. Dean stayed standing on the lintel. He asked in a harsh voice:

"I heard you--you were--what was that?"

Castiel pulled into himself, now little more than a crouch on the bed. For a long moment Dean didn’t think he was going to answer, but then Meg’s voice surprised Dean from the corridor: 

"That's your brother's gift. There's pieces of Sam’s memories of the tortures of self-reinforcing echoes of Cas’s guilt another, in that one custom-made vessel. Sometimes the echoes repeat off of each other so much and so loud he can't keep it together and they come out.” 

She sounded flat, almost clinical the way a nurse’s voice should be: 

“You ever met an orphaned kid who tells you he dream he killed his parents they way they were killed, before parents died?” At Dean’s look, she shook her head. Castiel was so still between them, head bowed, hands in his lap.

“But he didn’t? It’s just a normal kid, not some psychic thing, not an evil kid, just a normal kid. It’s a thing some kids do—a defense mechanism—if kids dreamed the bad thing, caused the bad thing, then they can control it. Sometimes it’s better to be evil than out of control.” 

She smirked, “I think you know what that is like, Dean. Just for Cas, he actually inhabits that living nightmare a little more when can't keep it from raising up where everyone else can see it.” 

She glanced at the crushed angel on the bed, took a breath and said: “You should leave."

Dean stayed and watched as Meg stepped into the room, put her arm over Castiel's shoulder and, gripping his wrist in her smaller hand, levered him up and laid him back to lay full-length on the bed. He stayed crouched over on his side, hands slowly raising to his ears. His face was contorted but he didn't make a sound, rocking his skull into his hands but otherwise staying stiff and unmoving.

"What can--I need to help. How can I help?" Dean asked, voice harsh.

Meg rolled her eyes, "We've been doing just fine without you these few weeks. Go off and sulk somewhere. He needs to rest."

Dean backed away, hurt welling in his chest along with anger and frustration, a wave which carried him to his still car before leaving him, blank and empty.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, so there's some Dean reading Cas the Bible stuff in here, which is how the story came out of my head. I'm not trying to convert anyone and I haven't gone to church regularly for a long time, but I think for an Angel of the Lord and a hunter who was the chosen vessel of an archangel, the Bible is an interesting point of commonality.
> 
> Also, there's strongly liberal interpretations of pretty much everything they read, so if you're a Biblical literalist, why are you reading gay angel porn? 
> 
> I make no apologies, only warnings.

Sam spent the day in the corner of the research stacks actually at the library, battling the slow internet connection for information from a research library in Iran’s internal database he’d flirted a login for out of a summer intern over the phone at the consulate.

He kept getting hints of some other source, of some piece of information he was missing. There seemed to be some authoritative document—tablet?—that some of the earliest writers assumed others had knowledge of. But Sam didn’t.

In the legal pad beside his computer, he’d started writing questions for Inias:

> _How do I kill Leviathans?_
> 
> _What are they doing here?_
> 
> _What is this tablet?_

He kept idly circling that one, first in red, and then in black and then in blue. He was about to cross it out when he felt the press of a palm on his shoulder. He tensed all over, muscles screaming for a fight, and looked up to see—Inias.

He looked more human, less rushed now, and he sat down without a word beside Sam. Plucking a pen from his stack, he wrote under the questions:

> _We don’t know._
> 
> _We don’t know._
> 
> _I don’t know_.

Sam quirked his head at the last one, gesturing for him to continue. Inias did, filling the remainder of the paper:

> _I can find out. There are stories we’re told as fledglings about how God instructed us and humanity to rule the world, sort of a,_

And here he paused and scratched something in Cyrillic, before reverting back to Roman letters:

> _an In Case of Emergency box_.

Sam pulled a red pen from his pile:

> _So how do we find the In Case of Emergency box, smash the glass, and get to the information?_

Inias replied:

> _I will find out_.

Sam was glad the Inias’s wingers were quieter than Castiel’s as he whooshed out—or else he would have had an irate small-town librarian on his hands.

\--

The next day, Dean made no pretense about where he was going and what he was doing. He harassed Sam out of bed before the rest of the world had gotten in their cars to go to work, refused to speak to him on the way to the library, and then drove straight to the hospital.

He parked in the visitors’ lot and marched into the lobby. He filled out his forms with his newest, most boringest fake, and got a visitors’ card.

His step got loser, less controlled, the closer he got to Castiel’s room. The doubts Dean had kept at bay with forthright planning and stubborn focus were calling him to go back to the car, wait one more day before trying to rebuild the city of their friendship.

Castile was alone when he entered, back facing the door, head tucked into his chest.

Dean froze: he had no idea what happened next. Castiel murmured and sat up, legs curling into his body so he looked like a round ball of misery, eyes widening. His body began to rock. Dean took a halting step forward, but at Castiel’s flinch, he stopped again.

Desperate, he cast his eyes around the room. The walls were grey and peeling, the bookcase assembled crooked, with one lonely black-spined book. With gold lettering. _A Bible_. Dean walked over, grabbing the smooth, mass-produced cover in his hands and flipping the onion-skin paper open to the beginning. He looked at Cas, waiting for some kind of permission and getting only wide eyes, slightly more confused than scared now. He started walked over to the lone, orange plastic chair, sat down and bracing the book open on his knee, began reading aloud.

_In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the_

_earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the_

_deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters._

Castiel's subtle rocking stopped, and Dean looked at Castiel, wanting to see if this was anything like useful. But the angel had started tipping forward into his own hands, and Dean quickly continued:

_And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that_

_the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God_

_called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was_

_evening, and there was morning—the first day._

\--

Lying on his back mid-morning sun warming his face, listening to Dean read from the Book of Genesis, Castiel felt some of the constant whirring which had filled his mind slow down, tipping and creaking as it quieted. In its place, he felt rise up a tide of feelings and thought patterns and joke and remembrances, all from his few brief moments of clarity between when he had been stunted-Emmanuel and had become the host of Sam’s echo.

He tried to lay back in his own mind and let them wash over him passively, but that's not how memories work. They pulled and tugged at him, demanding this iota of attention from his conscious mind or this smidge of recognition of their specialness. To dive in and immerse himself would be as distracting as listening to Lucifer's folly, but if he could control what he saw, he could stay afloat.

He dipped into his memory pool and brought out a shining example--the instant his Grace had become encumbered with Sam's echo of Lucifer.

_What the hell do you mean you can't?_

_I mean there's nothing left to rebuild._

_Why not?_

_Because it crumbled. The pieces got crushed to dust by whatever's happening inside his head right now._

_So you're saying there's nothing? That he's gonna be like this until his candle blows out?_

_I'm sorry. This isn't a problem I can make disappear. And you know that. But I may be able to shift it._

_Shift?_

_Yeah, it would get Sam back on his feet._

_It's better this way. I'll be fine._

_Wait, Cas, what are you doing?_

_Now, Sam, I'm sorry I ever did this to you._

_Cas_. That had been the first time Dean had called him by his nickname since he'd come back, and it had been the last nudge he'd needed to commit to his course of action. _Cas_.

He dipped into another memory, shying away from the moment he'd felt the memories of his brother’s torture of Dean’s brother chill sluice up his arm and into his heart. He'd be back to that before he knew, but now he wanted to dwell on that monosyllabic totem of his down and up fall.

 _Cas_. He'd never tell Dean, and never intended to, what that nickname meant to him. At it's core, it was blasphemy: it removed his “el”, his suffix meaning "of God", from his name. That's why he'd insisted, for the first few months of their relationship, in repeating over and over again that his title was "Angel of the Lord." He had assumed Dean's shortening had been intentional, designed to make him more human and acceptable.

That was Dean's intention, to a point. But Castiel had assumed Dean had wanted to bring him _down_ , to make him _less_ by calling him "Cas." He'd been told, long before he met the Winchesters or their line was founded, that humans worshipped and honored angels, and wished to be like them. They prayed to winged statues and begged them for intercession with God. To Castiel, that Dean Winchester would see angels as superior was obvious.

And when he'd stalked into that barn, that's when everything had fallen apart. He'd expected to evangelize a little about angels and heaven, have a human vessel all convinced of the righteousness of their partnership in seconds, and walk out with another subject for his care. And then he truly met Dean.

Castiel's lip twitched in recognition of his foolhardiness and he opened his eyes to peek at Dean, to see if he'd noticed. He hadn't. Castiel closed his eyes again and walked back into the open door of that memory.

 _Cas_. Dean had refused the inherent superiority of angels and even denied their existence, though their actions had determined every moment on his life. Or at least that’s what Castiel had believed at the time. Castiel had struggled to keep up with the human's need to contradict and argue and complain at every step. And so when Dean had called him that, _Cas_ , he'd known it was one more attempt on the human's part to lessen him, to diminish his role and his authority over his life.

He'd known that, but he'd known wrong. Because, though Dean's nickname's did give him some control over the people he named and did tied them to him, they did not tie them _down_. They tied them _in_. To Dean, for whom every major authority figure he had let guide him had abandoned him, used him or otherwise sullied his trust, a nickname which used the given name of the person he renamed meant he didn't want to change anything about them, but just modify them a little before he gave them full access to his heart.

With Sam, he called him _Samantha_ , part of his continually disturbing effort to use femininity as a cipher for weakness. So when Dean called Castiel _Cas_ , he didn't do it to make him into what Uriel would crudely term a "mud-monkey" and he didn't do it to remove the "of the Lord" from Castiel's self. He did it to let Castiel know he had a part of him, and that it was a mutual exchange.

There had been many times in their time together when that word, _Cas_ , had driven him to dig deeper and fight harder than he had in his millennias of life. When he heard it, it connected him in a vicious through-line to a meatier part of himself, a part that was above angel, the part that was human. A part he'd grown when he flew Dean's soul out of the mouth of the pit, a part that tired and breathed and whimpered in pain and sang in feeling.

When Castiel first laid a hand on Dean in hell he'd slipped a moment of his Grace under his skin, as a temporary tracking mechanism, but he'd never retrieved it; perhaps he'd never intended to. In that transfer, he'd gotten this piece of himself back. _Cas_ reminded him of the heights he'd seen souls fly to when they were also allowed their deepest depths; it reminded him of Dean and it made him stronger and more resolute in his quest for a newly imaged future.

He stepped out of that memory and back to the previous one: when Dean had called him _Cas_ that night in the hospital with Sam’s sanity hanging in the balance, Dean still hadn't known what that three-letter word would wreak on him. He used it unthinkingly, reflexively, to beg for family in need. To follow Castiel's thinking and see it was heading towards danger. And then, despite all he had done to him, Dean showed panic, as Castiel had dug into himself and reached out to Sam. After hearing _Cas_ , there wasn't much else Castiel had expected to drive him on, but the concern in Dean's voice nearly undid him.

There was so much he'd wished he had said, to have pressed into Dean’s open mind. Its form would have been words, apologies, but it's intent was much more varied. Castiel had wanted to go back to the way they were, and had never wanted to be used that way again. He had wanted to atone for his sins, but also to remind Dean that he'd carried out God's will in a particularly Winchester fashion. His first acts as God had been about supporting family and punishing hypocrisy, dealing honestly with the evil in humans and keeping heaven from setting the world back onto the rail-lines to the apocalypse.

Castiel had been, and when he could find space in his mind still was, proud of many of the things he had done when he had been God, or playing at God. He wanted Dean to be proud of them and him. This was the kind of thing the group therapist meant when he talked about "wishful thinking" and "trying to control others' feelings." Castiel tended to long for Dean's animal fear of emotions whenever he was called on in group, longed for the false-masculine paradigm John Winchester had burdened his sons with which said they should not feel and could never talk about it if they _did_.

Castiel did feel, and knew he did, and knew it was unexpected for angels and unrealizably difficult to explain to his brethren, but he had no need to discuss it with Dr Palmer.

Castiel pulled his mind gently back from that avenue, and, letting Dean's voice wash over him again, pulled himself back to the feelings he'd gone through when he’d been so surrounded by Sam’s memories of the lightbringer than his brother’s laugh had spilt from his lips.

 _Cold_. He knew Lucifer had told Dean that he burned so so cold, but given that Sam's fevered imaginings were not in-fact Lucifer but merely strong echoes of his Grace which had infected the scrapes his brother had left in Sam's soul, he hadn't expected that particular detail to be so vivid. But Sam’s memories of the exact nature of his torture—the core-cold terror of lovers hands turned to rotting bone, the panting breath of the hellhounds, the _stench_ —were overhwleming. The thoughts that took over his mind drew on his other, milder memories of his personal experience of Hell, but were mostly the stuff of Sam’s trauma.

When he transferred, _shifted_ , the ache of Sam's illness to himself, he had had to use a visualization of it. He thought of himself as an amphora. He spent precious milliseconds perfecting his own vision of that vessel; he'd learned in Gabriel's classroom that the clearer the vision the easier the transference.

 _Though, in those exercises they'd been moving memories of God's word from student to student, not the memory of a pain-ridden and loneliness-maddened archangel’s torture of a flayed human soul_. He though of himself as a foot-tall, white-clay, thick-walled vase with a wide brim and a narrow neck seeking to accept a cup of boiling blood. He would be good for pouring into but slow to pour out of again, impossible to heat from so small a quantity, and with capacity for it all.

He imagined Lucifer's influence raging through Sam's blood, in his body and as he reached out his hand to touch Sam's skin, he imagined the closest pooling of Lucifer's hate and loneliness and pride.

His hand made contact with Sam and he imagined that blood jumping the barrier of their skin, and flowing over his brim and into his pot, first a trickle so thin it could barely make it down the inner-walls to the glazed bottom, but then more and more as Sam's panicking heart beat it out of him. Castiel carefully watched the flow, widening his vessel's neck when it increased, widening it more when more and more came pouring out of Sam.

He realized when he was half-full that he had a problem. Lucifer's infection wasn't an inert substance like long-dead blood: it was alive. _It was climbing his walls._

It tried to tip over his vessel, it tried to freeze itself to crack it or boil over his lips. He kept it contained, but only barely. His vessel was much larger now, a tall man's height and a fat-man's width, and still the blood tried to escape it, escape him.

He kept the gateway open to Sam, letting it pour into and into and into him, feeling stretched but in control. But then the blood broke the metaphor. Sam did not contain Lucifer's consciousness: he was still trapped in his battle/embrace with Michael in the cage. But somehow, Sam's vessel-body or even demon-blood-tainted soul had hung onto a sliver, a shiv of Lucifer's grace.

Nasal and whiny and the worst of what Castiel remembered of the Morningstar, Lucifer's infection began to sing. He tried to imagine the blood as having a mouth, or using it's ripples and vibrations to make sound, but it made no sense, it was illogical. He began to crack.

He struggled. He tried to rip a new metaphor from his mind as quickly as he could. He thought of himself as a cage, but the blood flowed through the bars. A womb, but the blood passed through the membrane into his outer systems, crushing veins behind it as it raced to blacken his heart. A house, but the blood flowed through the cracks in his floor and into his loose-dirt foundations.

He realized, just as the flow from Sam finally, _finally_ , began to level and then taper off, that he was lost. That he had lost control of the metaphor and the blood. The blood gave Lucifer leave to touch every part of him which was physical, was co-mingling with his own heart’s blood with no chemical barrier.

He threw up his last, best barriers before the transfer completed, walling off his Grace so Sam’s memories of Lucifer could not convince him to use it for ill, and walling off those most dear memories to his heart, like the story behind the word _Cas_ , so Lucifer could not dig into them for leverage.

And then he sunk, subsumed under the cyclone of power and memories and pain and loneliness that was that tiny memory of Lucifer in Sam Winchester.

Like the slow tick-ticking of a car engine cooling, the warping, wrapping memories of his first moments of madness under Lucifer’s transferred embrace leaked their color away. The blood of the world around him oozed back into his room’s walls, leaving first a film then a smear then oily droplets, and then nothing. As the last droplet faded from just above the heater, on the center of the windowsill, Dean’s voice faded in.

He was still reading. The mid-morning sun was still treacling in. Nothing Dean had said had penetrated Castiel’s mind, but he hummed a little and it came back to him, the rhythm of the man’s voice, the feel of it tapping at his gates, waiting for him to come home. He settled back and tried to keep still.

\--

Over the top of the Bible, Dean was watching Castiel carefully. He'd noticed a tensing and relaxing in the angel, sun rolling over the curves in his sheets as the hunter had gotten ready to move between chapters. He'd noticed the angel breathing, and then not breathing, and then breathing again.

But he didn't seem to be reacting to what Dean was reading, and Dean wondered if he should stop. But if he stopped, he didn't know what he would say. Would he talk about how he wished Cas would get better already? That he couldn't stand to see him in pain or hear him screaming? But John Winchester wouldn’t have liked to hear him complain so his kicked those thoughts to the back and started back in on that tattered Bible.

He was just getting past the warm fuzzies part, to the part which pissed some people off. He remembered, he'd had this Sunday school teacher in Omaha who'd had them read the part about God forming Eve from Adam's rib and then look at anatomy charts, and pictures of cells and zygotes and fetuses and walked them through how men and women were formed the same, and women's weren't parts of men, less men.

He'd told John about it and he'd said she was a ball-busting feminist and moved them to another church, but Dean could still see the anatomy charts, the shocked looks on the other kids' faces, and the smirk the teacher had worn. He hadn't been able to read that verse without smirking since.

He'd been through 6 different confirmations in 6 different sects before he was old enough to watch himself and Sammy. John hadn't wanted him to have any particular attachment to God or Christianity, but catechism class and confirmation class meant free babysitting on weekends and John had needed the time to hunt. He paused after the section on how man and woman were made and his eyes were tired. He tried talking:

"Hey, Cas, is this how it happened?"

He didn't really expect an answer and was ready to dive into the next chapter when he heard a "Hmm?"

"Uh, this chapter, Genesis 2:21, where God puts Adam under heavenly anesthesia, takes out his rib, and makes Eve. Is that how it really happened?"

Even lying prone, in creased scrubs, hair matted with fear-sweat, Castiel was able to make a convincing bitch-face at him.

"No, Dean. Evolution is how men and women became shaped the way they are today. Evolution and luck. The true Word of God doesn't distinguish gender, or really pay any attention to sex--the first is a completely human construction and the second is rarely important to heaven's purposes."

Something in Dean rebelled, jumping out of his mouth. Maybe he just wanted to see the angel fight back again: "Cas there’s a lot of people thinking the Bible’s inspired word. That it came from angels or for God. Isn't it like Luke or Chuck's stuff?"

Castiel was shaking his head vigorously, body crunching up higher on the bed, making his hair slap crazily against his white pillowcase.

"Inspired, yes. Transcribed, no. The purpose of the human text of the Bible is to guide people in different ages. Different parts of the Word of God are useful at different times. Angels get the word out through the most popular mechanisms of the day--poetry in Homer's time, prose in Jesus's--"

"And now?" Dean asked, curious and luxuriating in this lucid-Cas discussion, letting the tetchy tone wash right over him and into the floor.

"Ah, now that's a tricky question. Once humans began replicating the old text and reusing not just the messages but the language itself, things got rough. How do angels keep humanity moving in the right direction without seeming to engage in hypocrisy?"

"Isn't that where inherent sinfulness comes in?" Dean was nearly trolling at this point. He wanted to know and he had years of Sunday school questions he'd long forgotten, but since he'd dug into this in the first place, he figured he'd keep on going.

Castiel snorted. "Sinfulness is a much less complicated concept that humans have made it. There are a few central messages, but God does not micromanage and, having used evolution of the body to get humanity to where it is today, would not then guide every waking moment of humanity's spiritual evolution as well. There are mutations of thought as well as body, and some are productive, like the rise of non-violence as a social value in the mid-20th century, and some less-so, like the parallel rise of mechanized cruelty to humans."

"But how do angels try to communicate God's central messages today?"

"Well, they don't."

Dean’s eyes widened and Castiel let his head flop back, rolling his eyes at the ceiling. Dean’s stomached told him it was lunchtime, but he told it to quiet down. He was listening.

"Angels were told to stop conveying messages to the general population a century ago. They were told to roll back their efforts to guide, to focus on building their own powers," Castiel now paused, chin and eyebrows looking thoughtful. "I do not now believe that was God's will. I believe it came from Uriel or Michael, who were hoping for an impending apocalypse and may have wearied of the task of devising new ways to communicate.” Castiel's voice was fading in and out now, and his head was lolling back and forth. “This is why Chuck's works, though both prophetic in nature and popular in form, were never popular in fact."

Dean kept on, trying to keep Cas in. "So, if the angel's had been on it, Chuck's _Supernatural_ might have been this decade's _Twilight_?"

Castiel’s voice was small, thin, but still clear: "I do not know what time of day Chuck's writings might have been, but they would had been much more widely spread with angelic intervention." Dean took a breath, about to continue reading, when he saw one of Castiel's hands begin to twitch, and then close into a tight-knuckled fist.

"You ok there, Cas?"

The angel held himself perfectly stiffly, neck straight and shoulders down, still flat on his back. Dean stood up, setting the black Bible down on the seat behind him, and padded carefully over to the head of the angel's bed.

"Hey, Cas," He started, and then the angel's eyes flew open. They were blue, and still clear, but they were frantic, unhinged with panic. He began shaking his head, mouthing "No" and then a wave ran up his body, like a seizure but then it stopped. He went back to being perfectly stiff, but with his eyes fixed on Dean's.

Dean dropped to his knees and did the first thing he thought of--wrapped his hands around Cas's clenched fist.

What he found there was a shock: Castiel's hand was so, so cold unwarmed by the noon sunlight. It was like ice, and chafing it felt like rubbing a snowball. He kept at it though, keeping silent as another wave whipped through the angel, this one harder than before. When Castiel yanked his hand out of Dean's grip, he let him, unable to resist and unwilling to do anything Castiel so clearly didn't want done to him. Dean stared down at him, before sitting on the edge of the bed, keeping a careful distance of inches between his thigh and Castiel's ribs, and his own hands in his lap.

"What, what are you, what are you doing, Dean?" The angel rasped, face still tight with pain and fear.

"I don't know what to do, Cas. Tell me what to do."

Castiel closed his eyes and Dean could have sworn he saw the worn edges of a smile creep into the creases of his face before disappearing in another wave of anguish.

"Read, the reading, it helped. Just, go back, go back over there, and read. To me."

Dean stood immediately, but then turned back to the angel.

"Any particular chapter and verse?"

The angel shook his head mutely, every movement agonized jerky with unreleased tension. Dean walked to the chair and sat down, pulling the book into his lap again, and began:

"Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field--"

"No!" Castiel's voice had a tinge of static in it, the screaming true voice which had made Dean's ears bleed, the voice of the angel who had burned out Pamela's eyes.

In a much quieter tone, composed of merely human syllables and inflections, "Skip past the serpent."

Dean nodded quickly and flipped to the next chapter; but seeing it was about the first fratricide and a brother who killed his own brother and was then reviled for it, he skipped forward into the begats.

When Dean started into Adam's genealogy, the angel stilled some. He was still full of fizzing tension, but the waves rolling through his body were smoother, calmer. At Seth, Dean noticed Cas's lips were moving on certain parts of the verse. He kept going, glancing up to try and figure out which ones the angel was reciting along with him. At Mahalalel he realized it was the son’s ages. He made it through Lamech when he couldn’t keep it in and asked:

"Cas, what are you doing?"

Castiel’s eyes stayed shut, but he turned his face so he was pointing a bit more toward’s Dean. His voice was wavering but he pushed it out: "The numbers of the ages of the sons of Adam are a code.” He took a quaking breath. “930, 912, 905, 895, 962, 369, 969, 777. Each of these numbers represents the angel who was in charge of the care and growth of that prophet. I'm remembering the names of my brothers and sisters."

"Are any of them you?"

Castiel shook his head, the movement more fluid and less frantic than it had been before. The afternoon sun was just reaching that honeyed edge, that gold color that promised a slow-emerging dusk. "No, I was never assigned an early prophet. I was occupied in what is now known as East Asia at the time, building rivers."

"What happened to evolution? Didn't God just set geology in motion as well?"

"In most places, yes. But there was choice to angels in those days as well, space to move within the great plan in ways we found pleasing. There was a time when each angel's own aesthetic sense was encouraged and developed to be individual and precise. I was accorded the design of the sea coasts of Japan. You may have noticed Gabriel's sense of humor in making the Nile flow northwards, or Uriel's penchant for cruel symmetry in scraping the seabed thin in a great ring under the Pacific plate to create what is now known as the Ring of Fire."

"You designed Japan?" The angel looked slightly pleased and slightly ill, nodding a little,

"Only the coasts," he said.

Dean glanced down at his book, and then asked the question which was burning in his mind: "When did it all change?"

"When did God stop giving the orders?"

"Yes."

"I do not know, Dean. There wasn't a lot of direct communication between seraphs and the most high at any point in my existence, but my ability to answer you is impeded by our differing senses of time. To me, God's direct influence left in different ways over millennia. One year it would be clear he was not longer guiding us in plan selection, another in language curation. He may have left all at once, but his influence still pinged on and pings on throughout the universe."

"What do you mean, left? Joshua said he was still here, he just didn't think the earth was his problem?"

"Well, Joshua is not necessarily the most reliable source," Dean started: he had thought Joshua was the only angel other than Castiel whose word was worth something.

Castiel continued quickly: "Not that he was lying. But like that book in your hands interprets God's word through the eyes and minds and souls of humans, Joshua comes to understand God's intentions through his own window into the world."

"So where do you think God is?"

Castiel answered fervently, "He's here. He's everywhere. He's just," Castiel huffed, bunching his lips together and rolling his eyes up towards his eyebrow. The sunlight was still strong coming from just over the trees. When he continued it was in slow then rushed blocks, like he was translating in his head.

"God would give moments of grace to species he intended to survive. The clear, African plain was perfect for humans, and intentionally so. Annael groomed that grassy expanse for millennia to ensure it would be safe and dangerous enough to grow the humans God intended. He tasked Raphael with crafting the Galapagos to ensure certain turtles thrived.”

Cas’s eyes were slitted at the ceiling, eyes moving backwards and forwards, reading his words from the loose paint waves. The walls, so blindingly white under direct sunlight, were grey and dappled in the dusk. Dean stood and turned on the light, then sat back down.

“He would also give moments of trial, where he removed that Grace and forced species to survive and evolve on their own: ice ages, volcanic outbursts, massive meteor strikes, new and more vicious predators." He paused again, breathing getting harsh and a thrum of pain running up his sides. Dean clenched his fists in the book, getting ready to continue reading if the angel could no longer communicate, but he continued:

"I believe he had placed the angels in a time of Grace for millennia, and now intends to see us rise or fall as exactly the creatures he has made us. He is probably guiding another species, carefully pruning and fertilizing, while he watches us."

Dean felt cold and alien in the world Castiel described. He said so softly: "But this experiment is killing humans, which you said he wanted to protect."

"The species, yes, God wants to protect the species of humans. He also has plans for individuals and abhors violence. But he allows it to happen because, without violence," here the angel paused again, another thrum of pain gushing up his still form.

"Without violence," he gritted out, "We would be like the Leviathans. Arrogant in our superiority, hungry only to dominate and consume more and more and more. The potential of not only being the predator but the preyed upon forced entire species to negotiate as well as forcing individuals to compromise to survive."

"I fear," and he rocked the bed a tiny bit with the force of his renewed spasms, feet flailing, "I fear now the angels have become too arrogant and do not see themselves as servants of Heaven but as controllers of earth.” He was breathing through his teeth, gritting his words out. “I believe God intends the Leviathan to teach the angels the lesson humans learned when Annael set the lions upon them."

Dean leaned closer, trying to throw Cas a verbal rope to hold onto: "And the Leviathans? What am I supposed to do about them? Sam’s studying them, but I’m not sure he’s getting any answers. What preys on them?"

Castiel raised his head, his mouth contorted into a cruel smile, "Why, you do, Dean Winchester. You and your brother prey on anything."

Then his eyes slid closed and he slumped and fell back, head narrowly missing the hollow metal bar behind his pillow, Dean rose with a start, reaching to check the angel's pulse or something, when he stopped himself and lowered himself into the light chair. Cas hadn’t wanted to be touched before, and Dean wasn’t going to violate his space while he was asleep.

Seeing his thin chest rising and falling Dean began to read aloud again softly, the civilizations before Noah was commanded to build his ark and after. He watched God try and try and try again with humans, and even knowing that wasn't exactly how it went down, he sort of got how a being who would create and create and create would also just let his creations run wild, just to see what they would do.

He finished the ark, having enjoyed the tension Noah must have felt when he sent the bird out day after day after day for sign of land but none came. Then, with nothing to explain or prepare it, an olive leaf. Dean glanced up into the late evening dark, hearing the coos and clucks of the wildlife, the slow steps of the orderlies making their rounds. Meg must have made some hell of an excuse to get them left alone for so long. Unexpected thankfulness for the demon rushed in, but he pushed it aside and kept reading.

The hunter sniggered through the tale of Noah's drunkenness and worked his way through Noah's begats. He saw the same pattern of create, watch, destroy, create, watch, destroy.

He zoned out a little with Abraham, aside from silently judging him for constantly saying his wife was his sister long after the prophet knew:

1)    It didn’t work,

2)    It just caused everyone trouble.

But when he hit Chapter 16 and had to stop. The first mention of angels. He didn't know how Cas would react, but he wanted him to be awake for it when he did, so Dean flipped the old book closed.

The air was still, the heater had been off for sometime now he realized. The warmth of the day flowed through the window and into the air, reflecting off the walls.

He considered his options, but felt his eyes tugging down and down and down. As he stood, he felt waves of sleepiness crash up from his heart and slosh down from his knees, dragging him down. He walked over to rummage in the free-standing closet along the wall.

There he found extra bedding, include a surprisingly thick mattress pad and expectedly thin sheets. He laid the pad down on the bare floor, tossed a naked pillow at the top.

The sky was dark with the moonlight too weak to brighten the night. No external lights and when Dean walked over to the switch to flip it off, none internally as well. He stood, hand on the wall, breath matching the angel’s steady rhythm. As his eyes clicked and adjusted to the non-light, he found himself looking at the sleeping angel.

At some point while Dean was reading, Cas had loosened up, face smoothing and hands uncurling from their fists. His face was turned away from Dean, but from his cheek he looked relaxed. Dean paused for a moment, and then stepped forward, ghosting his hand over the angel's side, not touching but confirming his warmth, his solidity.

Dean crowded himself down by the side of the bed, and fell asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow.


	9. Chapter 9

Sam should have been more worried when Dean didn’t come home, and he was a bit pissed he’d had to take the 3 mile hike back to the motel all by his lonesome, but it’s not like there was any mystery as to his brother’s location. If he’d managed to get a bit of his shit together with Cas, Sam wasn’t going to fuck with it.

He flipped through the notes and notes of pages he’d written with Inias. The location of the tablet—the true one, not the three or four Dick Roman was digging up. The name of the newest prophet, whose life would be ripped to shreds as soon as they pulled the tablet up. That’s where Inias was right now, doing his impression of a wavelength of celestial intent with no need for a vessel as he flowed through millennia-old temple ruins to find the God-stone.

Sam couldn’t believe how fast things were moving now, how Inias had bought into his plan. He suspected it had something to do with Inias needing orders and Sam being willing to give them, and something about his human creative spark that the young angel found surprising.

Sam sat and bounced for a moment on the crappy motel bed, pulling out his phone and considering texting Dean. He’d been in constant contact with Meg. She’d given regular reports on what she’d heard and seen of the two men from her post just outside the door.

 _Reading the Bible_.

_Still fucking reading._

_Where is the Dean who liked to fuck and fight? I’m going to start bleeding aurally_.

Sam had no idea what had gotten into Dean, but he if it was helping him and Cas get back into each other’s pockets, it was for the good. Maybe he was reading Cas the naughty parts—those had always been Dean’s favorites.

Sam drifted to sleep, lists of plans rolling over the backs of his eyes.

\--

Dean awoke to the feeling of fingers trailing along his cheek. Normally, i.e. in any situation in which he was waking up in a motel room with Sam, this feeling would be deeply creepy/an indication that Sam was retaliating for some ghastly prank or other. But he had a sense of peace and felt like he was in a tent, camping. Like there was soft light around him, not too bright to hurt but enclosed; cut off; safely held.

The fingers were human temperature, a little rough from work and definitely male. From the emerging kinks in his back and shoulders, Dean learned he had spent the night on the floor. From the antiseptic hospital smell, he guessed he'd stayed in Cas's room overnight. He took an easing breath and, without opening his eyes, he slowly moved his hand up to still the fingers on his cheek.

He opened his eyes and looked up at Castiel, who was hovering at the edge of his bed in the dawning light with open-faced curiosity and absolutely no shame about his touch-survey of Dean's face. Dean tucked the tips of his fingers into the angel's palm and tugged it flat against his face.

"Good morning, Cas." He said evenly.

"Good morning, Dean," Castiel replied gravely. They both stopped, and stared at each other. Dean could feel the awkwardness rising, and realized the angel's fingers were getting slick in his hand with his own sweat. He gave them a last pull-and-squeeze before he let them go, but unlike any normal person with a modicum of social skills, the angel just left his hand on Dean's face.

"Where do you want to go with this?" Dean asked, surprised at the calm in his own voice.

Castiel snatched his hand back, and Dean immediately felt the loss and kept that feeling off his face. "No where, nothing, nothing."

"Alright Cas." They both paused, this time Castiel refusing to make eye contact and instead staring at the bridge of Dean's nose from about 18 inches away.

"So," Dean said, pausing, "Would you like me to keep reading?"

Castiel nodded, too crisp for it to be comfortable, "I would like that, yes, that would be fine."

Dean stood, stretching and feeling his shirt rise high above his waistband. He didn’t see Castiel’s eyes follow it and then dip back down, starving. He tugged his clothes in order, sat down and started. He skipped ahead, flipping back and forth until he found the story of Ruth. He'd first heard it read at a wedding he'd gone to--either the one where John had them crash to catch the groom's incipient sacrifice of his bride, or maybe that one frankly unsettling hunter wedding, where the party favors had been hand-poured silver bullets and the vows had been in Latin and Enochian.

But he remembered feeling surrounded by the story as the old man read it, lulled sideways into listening. If he'd been told it would be a sermon, he would have tuned out and practiced rolling coins over his knuckles or flipping his newly stolen knife. But it was just a reading.

And if he'd been told it would be a love story, one of the greatest love stories, he would have tuned out. He didn't have time for romance, and the only long-term commitment he planned to make was to keeping Sammy alive and as happy as he could make him.

But it was about a mother and her daughter-in-law. He was ready for some in-laws jokes, but the story kept unspooling and unwinding. The son died. The mother-in-law stayed. The daughter-in-law moved and left their homelands and rather than staying—the reasonable response in Dean's unintentionally engaged mind—she goes and says:

_"Do not urge me to leave you or turn back from following you; for where you go, I will go, and where you lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God, my God._

_Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried._

_Thus may the LORD do to me, and worse, if anything but death parts you and me."_

For her _daughter-in-law_. Because they were _friends_. It was the first time Dean remembered thinking he might give his life for someone other than Sammy or Dad. The first time he considered bonds he might make outside of blood.

Sam had come home from school a few months later bubbling over about "families of choice" and how that's what Uncle Bobby was. He’d made John feel awkward, but yeah, that was right. This piece was about a family of choice, and how much you should give up for your friends.

Dean read on, working his way through other sections as the sun worked it’s way up the opposite wall, but his mind kept going back and back again to Ruth.

He thought about the tent they shared, the long, tedious chores which made up the lives of biblical people, the unkindnesses they must have suffered as women alone in the ancient world.

He wondered if Ruth had ever left.

If things had gotten so bad, so irritating or painful or tiring that she'd just walked away.

Did she walk far enough to lose sight? Did she sleep where she could see their shared tent, but where she could not be seen? Had she felt like she was crossing a great river, her feet stuck between two rocks, the current pushing and tugging at her thighs but unable to move?

A movement caught his eye and he looked up into Castiel's peering face. The angel was perched at the foot of his bed, staring into Dean’s face over the Bible. His eyes were so big, so blue, Dean’s breath left him for a moment.

"What are you thinking about, Dean?" Castiel asked.

Dean swallowed. "How much longer you're going to be stuck here."

Castiel flinched and looked away, sitting back in the middle of the bed. "I don't had sufficient control to be away from this unchanging environment," he told his hands.

"Yeah, man, I know," said Dean. "But someday, you might--"

"I might what, Dean? Get better? Go back to the way I was? _I'll never be the same, Dean._ If that's all you want, then you should leave." Cas started staring at the door, willing Dean through it, or willing it to open.

Dean stood stepped over to the hunched-over angel, and sat beside him, thigh and biceps flush against each other. He was still angry but he wanted to try something. He ducked his head to get to Cas's level.

"Hey," he said. "I'm here because I want to be. I'm here because you need me and I think I can help. I'm not here for a particular kind of progress or a particular shift. Wherever you go, I'll be there. Wherever you end up, we'll make it work."

Castiel's shoulder looked dubious, but then he ducked his head. Dean could see the sides of a smile.

He muttered something, and Dean leaned in closer to ask:

"What's that, Cas?"

"You don't have to stay." Dean's hands gripped the Bible tight, onionskin pages wincing. He took a breath that filled his lower back and leaned his shoulder into Cas's. He considered and then said:

"I'd rather stay.” He continued lightly, "What do you want to read next?"

"You know it isn't really God's word, Dean." Cas said, peevishly.

"We've been over this, Cas, but you probably know this thing better than anyone else I've met, so what's your favorite, under-read passage."

"I have a certain affection for Song of Solomon, but its pornographic nature has not made it unpopular." Cas tilted his head.

"If I am restricted in my choices to a favorite, comparatively unknown passage, I would focus on Paul's letters to the Romans.”

Dean leaned away, beginning to flip through seeking that particular epistle. Cas reached over him, thumb brushing Dean's when he slipped it between the pages, folding the book open and pressing an index finger into the thin page.

He slid it down and began reading in his gravelly voice:

“I commend to you Phoebe our sister, who is a servant of the church in Cenchrea. That you may receive her in the Lord in a manner worthy of the saints, and assist her in whatever business she has need of you; for indeed she has been a helper of many and of myself also. Greet Priscilla and Aquila, my fellow workers in Jesus Christ. Who risked their own necks for my life, to whom not only I give thanks, but also all the churches of the Gentiles.”

"--wait, was Phoebe a man's name, Cas?"

"No, Phoebe was one of the three female church leaders—somewhere between deacons, bishops and priests—Paul wrote letters to. He was asking the Romans to accept their leadership.”

"No, but Cas, they were women? I thought chicks weren't in the priesthood until, well, the 70s?"

Castiel was in full audio-history-book-mode: "Most faiths have a long tradition of women being involved as leaders, and early Christians were no different. The later patriarchal structure was a social and culture construct, not a continuation of how the faith was practiced in the lifetimes of Jesus's disciples nor an accurate representation of Jesus's teachings. The treatment of women and of non-straight men by later generations of Christians had nothing to do with the laws of God."

Dean shook his head. “Don't you have any parts of the Bible you like that aren't going to start a culture war?" Dean’s face froze

"I am tired now, Dean." Castiel turned on his side, eyes fixed on the window. His dismissal was clear.

Dean sat upright, eyes seeing the noon light in a way they hadn't for sometime now. His stomach growled, completely insistent now.

He stood up, glancing around him to see if he'd left anything.

"I guess I'll head off then." There was a flutter, a wild moment of panic in Cas's eyes before he stuttered it, gripped it tight and held it down under his impassive mask.

"Cas—you know I won't leave for good, right? I'll always come back. I wouldn't leave for good." Castiel nodded, eyes withholding contact.

Dean walked around the bed, knelt and thrust a hand under the angel's chin, levering it up. He first felt his skin hard and cold as marble, but then it softened, and Cas creakingly let Dean pull his face to the light.

"I need you to hear me, man. I _won't leave you again_." This time he saw the panic for what it was and tried to press into the angel, through his eyes alone, the truth. The angel held his gaze, and then flinched away, hands picking at the hem of the thin sheet. Dean couldn't hold him if he tried, and he feared leaving bruises on his friend.

“I'll be back in the morning, Cas."

Castiel nodded, eyes downcast and Dean hesitated, then picked up the Bible from the chair, set it on the battered shelf, and walked to the door.

\--

Dean knew he owed Sam a significant explanation after going AWOL for 48 hours, but there hadn’t been as much shouting as he’d expected. They’d driven to the greasiest diner they could find, Sam strangely comfortable eating processed food again, and Sam had given him the read-out.

Learning Sam was working with angels wasn’t Dean’s favorite moment of the day, but Inias didn’t seem as terrible as Dean had expected. Their plan seemed solid:

Awake the tablet, get the prophet to read it, hope it had an instruction manual on how to end the Levis, do so, eat pie.

Dean didn’t over-share. He didn’t tell Sam about the read-along story-time, he didn’t tell him about Castiel’s fits and quaking fears, he didn’t even tell him about how funny Cas was when he was lecturing Dean on the finer points of liturgical interpretation.

Dean didn’t know what this thing with Cas was, but he wanted to figure it out before sharing.

\--

Parts of Sam and Inias’s plan to save the world went incredibly fast in those next few weeks, and some slow. They found the tablet and got it to their homebase just fine, and Kevin Tran was happy to help as long as he could still practice his cello and stay at home.

But the translation. _Ugh_. It took _forever_. It wasn’t until Sam placed a few threatening phone calls to Kevin’s P.E. coach to get him out of mandatory exercise that Kevin got enough extra time to dig into translating and transcribing it.

They were getting there, they knew about the history of the beasts and the trinity of blood, and the holy bone, but they were being cautious and waiting to fully translate everything before moving forward.

The whole time, Dean spent every day and not a few nights camped out at Castiel’s hospital room. Sometimes he returned, late and grey, unable to speak clearly with exhaustion. Sometimes he could do nothing until he’d unloaded some of his shit from his day. Sam was spending a lot of energy holding to two of them together, not giving Dean any reason to step back. He kept the fort running and kept hoping that Dean and Cas would pull through, and then they could all go back to fighting monsters and saving people.

Meg’s updates had tapered off. She’d given hourly, then half-daily, and finally daily messages for the first week, but eventually she’d found Sam at the library:

“I’m off.” She said, voice showing not a whit of concern for the SHHHHHH QUIET sign behind her.

“What?” Sam said, “Aren’t you still being hunted?”

“Yeah, but I’m bored to _death_ in that place. And Clarence has a new chewtoy, so, you know, it’s been terrible.”

“Wait—“ Sam said, “I just; thank you.” She puffed a laugh out of her belly.

“I’ll see you when you need me again. I can’t expect that will be too long, the way things are going.”

And with that, she sauntered away.

Sam shook his head, and texted Dean to give him the news and then returned to his research.

 


	10. Chapter 10

Dean jogged from the car door to the automatic doors of the hospital. He didn't have to sign in anymore, he just nodded to Janine and swept off to Cas's room. A moment before the door he paused, held up for a moment where Cas couldn't see him through the glass. He settled his mind, not knowing if he was going to open the door to find Cas in the fetal position under the bed or sitting up, happy and alert. Probably something in between.

Dean took a breath and tried to remember how he wanted this to go, how he wanted to feel and how he wanted Cas to feel. He let it hiss out through his teeth and yanked the door handle down, pushing the door flat against the wall as he strode inside.

But the door didn't touch the wall, it jolted against something givable but solid. Dean tensed--in his experience, not good things hid behind doors--but he reigned in his discontent and stepped back and to the side, getting himself out of the expected line of attack. He reached out a hand and swung the door away from the thing against the wall and back to the frame and saw Cas, standing with his arms braced against where the door had just been, face a little bashful and a little shocked.

There was a distinct red line forming down the middle of his forehead, and Dean immediately stepped forward, hand raising to--do what, he didn't know. He let it fall when Cas flinched at his sudden movement forward and settled his hands at his sides, arms loose and posture open. He backed up half a step and said, keeping eye contact with the wide-eyed angel:

"What's up, Cas?"

"I had intended to surprise you." Cas looked to the side and back up at Dean. "I was ineffective."

"I get you were trying to do something, but why hide behind the door, Cas? Were you going to say 'boo!'?"

"Something similar to that." Cas said, feet shuffling and eyes unconnecting. Dean nodded, and crowded the angel over towards the cot. Cas was going slowly, jerky, and Dean moved his expectations for the day down a gear or three.

He very carefully reached his hand towards the angel's shoulder to press him down to sitting and Cas skipped away from him, eyes wild but face otherwise controlled. Dean raised his palm, and squared his body's the to angel's.

"Cas." He started, and then lowered his voice and took his tone to a calmer place. "Can you tell me where you are?" He tried.

Castiel scowled. "I'm in the hospital and the devil is in my mind, stalking in the mazes and pathways I borrowed from your brother." Dean felt cold trickling down his neck and under his collar, seeping into his entire chest and following his veins around his body.

He stepped forward, watching the angel for adverse reactions. Cas swayed towards him, but then back again, eyes wide and glancing from side-to-side.

"Ok, Cas, why don't we start there? Can you tell me what you're brother's doing?"

"He's sitting there," Castiel's eyes moved to the corner across from the door, as far from where Cas had been hiding as he could get in the thin room.

"And is he saying anything?"

"Yes." Castiel nodded, now his eyes were allowed to notice the devil they couldn't seem to lose that space. Dean shifted a bit at a time until Castiel had to stare through him to get to where the devil was in his mind.

"Cas, I need you to work with me here. What is Satan saying?"

"He's listing the names of every person I've killed, in alphabetical order, and then by age, and then by country, and then by predestined lifespan." Castiel's voice was a plank of pine, flat and near to cracking under strain of the weight he put on it.

"Oh, Cas," Dean said, and it wasn't until the angel took a hurried step back that he'd realized he'd closed the distance between them and was leaning his shoulders toward the angel's. He didn't know what his body had had panned, but he aborted at the terror in Cas's eyes.

There was something below the terror. Something like confirmation; like relief. That was more disturbing than the fear.

"Cas, how does that make you feel?"

"Punished." And much much quieter, so low Dean wouldn't have heard it without being deep in the backwoods of Cas's personal space, "Justly punished."

Dean pushed into Cas's space at that, grabbed his shoulders as the angel beat at his chest, hands fluttering and feet slipping on the linoleum as he tried to get away.

"No!" Dean shouted, voice high and tight and too open. He shocked the angel, who'd tangled his hands between Dean's t-shirt and under his plaid shirt, pushing him at arm's length but also rutching up his shirt so his stomach showed, their legs tangling as Dean took him to the thin wall, to limit Cas's escape options.

"No." He whispered, shoving Cas's shoulder back into the wall. "No, Cas, no."

And Cas's eyes were scornful, his mouth wrapped in sarcasm.

"I hardly think you're the one to absolve me of my crimes, Dean. You tried to have me killed for them, you may remember." Dean was so far from his emotions, he didn't even feel that blow, but he kept the pressure up, kept holding the angel still. Castiel was slowly settling, doing his wood impression, shoulders stony under Dean's hands, wrists still pressed into his chest.

"You also have no cause to keep me here, and no ability to make me stay. I could disembowel you with a word,"

Threats, Dean could deal with threats. His eyes filled with pure Winchester backtalk.

"Do it, Cas. You think you need to hurt me, to threaten me?” He leaned closer: “Do it." The angel cocked his head, having expected a fight. He released Dean's shirt, but Dean kept the grip on his shoulders.

"You need to belief you deserve help, Cas, before we can do any helping. You can't," Dean searched for the words, letting the angel's shoulders go but hands still hovered between them, light on the air, "You can't give him that opening."

The angel used the space between them to collapse into the wall, shoulders becoming level with his knees faster than Dean's eyes could track. His head crept between his knees until he was a puddle of loose-fitting hospital clothes with a mop of unruly black hair on top.

Dean stood over him, as lost as he'd ever been with Cas's mental space. He couldn't talk standing while his friend sat, so he squatted, and then took a knee.

He tried, "He's not here, Cas." The angel's head sunk deeper into his arms.

"He's not. You have to believe me, man." Dean was keeping his hands to himself, put trying to force his voice past Cas's arms. "He's a manifestation of your guilt, Sam’s memories of the pit finding new life in your mind."

Dean had spent a lot of nights trying to decide what Cas's ailment was. This was his best bet. He raised his hand to touch Castiel’s shoulder, but stopped again at the last moment, unsure of his welcome.

"When you pulled Sam's body from hell--and by the way, if Satan is going to be listing your sins he should be counting that one in as a major favor to the world, or at least to me--his soul kept experiencing the torture until Death brought the rest of it forward. "

"So that's straight-up what was behind his wall: his memories. But as all three of us gang of fuck-ups who've spent time in hell know, those memories are more alive than nearly anything we can form here, so they can self-replicate and they can argue themselves into a center-stage billing in our minds."

Dean settled back, eyes roaming over his friend, trying to see if his words were washing any of his hurt away. No sign yet. He continued:

"It's supernatural shellshock, where we relive the memories rather than seeing them through a window but they have the power to shift and warp to feel alive."

"So when you shifted it I figure you were rebuilding Sam's wall but not from pieces of his own soul as Death had, but from your own Grace," Dean was guessing here, but it was the closest he'd managed to guess and he just needed to keep talking until Cas raised his head up off his knees. He was still, unmoving as his graveyard replicas.

"And you took out some of your defenses to shift the problem, some of the walls you had. And I don't think your mind works like ours; you've never had to grapple with guilt or the emotional aftermath of killing or," and Dean choked and pushed through, "being killed. And when you were rebuilding in Sam's head? I bet you got a good long look."

"And that kind of understanding is poisonous. So just when you were most vulnerable, because you'd finally remembered who you were after being with Daphne, and just after you'd just given up a piece of yourself to rebuild Sam, and you'd gotten a delux tour of how an emotionally-scarred and traumatized human organizes his emotions, when you used your own self as a strainer for Sam’s crazy, pulling it out to leave him whole. And bits of them stuck to you."

Dean shook himself, seeing Cas shiver and trying to wrap up, get to some kind of conclusion that might help him. He kept trembling and Dean kept trying to talk.

"So it was the first time you'd seen how we shelve our extensive catalogue of emotional shit but you tried to handle it without any of the callouses which come of growing up with human emotions, human guilt and greed and want and need. I think you dove deep into your trauma and guilt and the best for the face of that was Satan."

"Because I'll bet? The stuff he talks about? Some of it's from this decade, but how often has he brought up things your garrison or species did wrong? You're functionally trying to catalogue and rearrange your entire understanding of your existence, using a limited framework and a frankly depressing current experience."

Cas's head was still down, but his shoulders had settled some, the shaking easing. "The short story is, Satan is here. He's the mouthpiece of your trauma, and you can't shut him up because you gave your walls to Sam to use. So you need to just be gentle with yourself as you continue to figure it out."

Dean felt spent, but he had one last attempt,

"Cas? I need your eyes for this," the angel shook his head but then, slowly, surprisingly, raised his head and his too-tight eyes. "You don't deserve this. You just don't.”

“Justice comes from equal payment, and you've done so much good, this cancels." Castiel shook his head and lowered it to his knees again. “You need to hear me.”

Dean’s foot pinged, letting him know it had fallen asleep. He stood and walked backwards to the chair, picking up the Bible and beginning to read silently, trying with his presence alone to help the angel get into a better space.

Sometime later, Dean glanced over and Cas was on his side, head pillowed on his arm, eyes slitted. Dean started—was Cas in a state, freaking out about something so hard he couldn’t stay seated?

Slow as he could make himself, Dean slip to his knees from the chair, setting the Bible pages down on the grimy floor to hold his place. He leaned forward onto his hands, lowering himself until his cheek was bare inches from the floor, trying to get a look into Cas’s eyes. He saw them, clear, unpanicked, but not present.

He crawled forward, avoiding startling movements, until he was slightly out of an arm’s reach of the angel.

“Cas.” He questioned quietly.

The angel’s eyes flickered up to him and then back down, parallel to the floor.

“Cas. You ok, buddy?” Castiel’s eyes flickered up for a quick moment and then back to his bit of wall again. He turned himself over in one smooth motion of muscles, putting the back of his neck where Dean had been looking for his eyes. The shift exposed the low bit of skin between his hips and where his shirt caught on the floor. Dean said,

“I’m going to check your pulse, Cas.” He reached to the angel’s neck, pausing for a breath before he pressed two cool fingers to the human-warm angel’s neck. The pulse was there, still oddly strong, perhaps intentional heart-beating was stronger than the involuntary kind non-possessed human bodies used. Dean kept his hand on Castiel’s neck, pressing his palm into the muscle.

“You need to forgive yourself, Cas,” he murmured. Then, coming out of a quiet space in the middle of his chest, he whispered: “I have.”

Castiel started and then stilled, and Dean could feel the pulse slow and stop. His own heart tripped. The angel was still breathing.

The angel sat up, smoothness of the movement speaking of him accessing some of the basic kinetic aids of his angel powers. His back still to Dean, he tipped over backwards, head coming to rest in the crook between Dean’s two crossed ankles.

His eyes were wide and blue, and when he reached a hand up to Dean’s cheek to cup it, Dean did not flinch away. He kept firm eye contact, and when Castiel’s hand slipped to his neck to adjust his head to a steeper angle, to deepen their eye contact, he let him.

Castiel made no other movement, his fingers indenting the muscle in Dean’s neck but not bringing enough pressure to hurt. He took a breath, and the angel mirrored him, taking blink for blink, breath for breath, and Dean would bet but did not confirm, pulse for pulse.

Castiel didn’t arch up or lean back, he kept his own neck stiff and his own eyes tight to Dean’s. Seconds and seconds passed, and Dean reached up his own hand to his friends, cover his wrist with his palm.

“I forgive you, Cas.” He said. Castiel’s eyes pulled shut at this, his fingers stiff and tightening. Then they flew open and were wild, searching for confirmation.

Whatever they found was enough, and Castiel sat back up, releasing his hold on Dean’s neck in the process, then pulled himself over to his bed, sitting on it and crossing his ankles.

“What were you reading, Dean? I believe we can move forward in Genesis, if you are so inclined.”

Fizzing from change, from Castiel’s newly elevated tone and height, Dean stood, walked over to the chair and pulled it up, close enough to Cas’s bed that Dean could brace his knee against it.

“Sure, Cas. Got any preferences?”

\--

The next day, Dean asked the same question. Rather than requesting they go back to the story of the arc, the covenant between God and Noah, Castiel asked for something a little rougher: Delilah and the rapists.

"There is this one--the story of the circumcision of the men of the Canaan. It says one of them raped Dinah, Joseph's sister, and in return her dozen brothers asked her rapist to marry her, but then said he and his entire tribe would need to be circumcised. And so all are circumcised, all adult men had their foreskin cut off--" Dean was wincing and crossing his legs firmly, with his hands in his lap, cupped ever so slightly, "--and as they lay in pain for the circumcisions, Diana's brother came in and cut all of their throats." Castiel turned, grinning at Dean.

Dean didn't react favorably, so Castiel continued. "It's hilarious. They used the religious rite of male purification to punish the men of another tribe for harming their family, as well as dealing the same level of genital damage to them as their sister experienced, and then killed them as well." Cas looked so earnest, but Dean could honestly not see the punchline. "It's divine wrath, all wrapped up in a parable." He tried, voice fading out.

"Dude, it sounds kind of horrible." Dean answered, rattling the sound of Castiel saying "genital damage" around his shaking head, trying to get it out.

"Fine, then. What story would you like me to tell?" Dean paused and considered. He hadn't read the Bible since those church schools, but he flipped it open in his minds eye, spreading the thousands of pages across his mind, feeling which got brighter and clearer in his memories. He started:

"There were men who gathered around Jesus, who followed him in the worst way possible. Like puppies. Like a sailboat in the wind. Like little kids. They followed him and he told them to lead and speak and they could never quite do it. They so loved to follow him.

"So, one day, he circled them up and told them to go out and speak about his words. And they were like: 'we all speak Hebrew and Greek and Latin, but what about the other languages?' and so he called down tongues of flame to light their minds, to teach them to be polyglots. He made them grow farther than they planned to, than they thought they could. He had them better, like a friend. Like a lover. Like a father and a man."

"And they went out and they spoke the words he'd given them, and they were in every language imaginable. He really hadn't wanted them to follow. He'd wanted them to go and build their own homes, their own communities. Love wasn't dependence, it was interdependence and independence from him."

Cas's eyes were wide. "Well, that is one way to consider the story of Pentecost."

Dean looked at him, "Then what's the right way?"

"You're close," Cas started, "though your characterization of the apostles as juvenile dogs is unnecessarily reductionist. The way to think of that story isn't about Jesus forcing unwilling men to be apart from him in building the church, but," Cas quirked his head to think, "about him offering a caveat: 'Just because I came to this time and this place, don't think that this is the only time and place that matters. You in Baghdad and you from Delhi and you who just arrived from Sudan and you from the Celts, you all have places in my kingdom."

"The Son of God didn't really have a race or a gender or a language. It's just prophets and apostles didn't have any likelihood of writing about him without those trappings, so he wrapped himself in them. But they're all meant to be taken as metaphors. Really, a carpenter who just happened to flee to Egypt and back, following the historical route of the tribes of Canaan and Judea only to end up in Jerusalem, the holy city?"

"Jesus lived his life as a man, but also as a maker of parables and metaphors. It was meant to be translatable into any language, any time, any medium, because the core stories aren't about the trappings, they're about how to treat people. The loaves and fishes mean: share what you have. The overturned tables at the great temple: keep some things holy. The water into wine: treat guests well."

Dean said, "There's a place in that one Sammy caught that I never had." He flipped around, finding it:

“And he said to him, “Every man at the beginning sets out the good wine, and when the guests have well drunk, then the inferior. You have kept the good wine until now!”

"Get it, Cas? The guest of the wedding at Cana had been expecting the host to rely on everyone bing smashed to start serving thee bad shit, but when Jesus did his watched into wine schtick, he made it good wine." Dean grinned.

"You seem to take inordinate joy at bringing the stories in the scriptures down to the level of experience you share with them. In your time reading that book and hearing it read, what did you think of the Song of Songs?" Cas thought on the sensuality in those passages and thought, Yes, this might be an in.

"Oh, you mean the best porn in the Bible? Yeah, it's pretty good." Dean paused and he could feel it, just like he could see the edges of the sunrise creeping out the window, that this conversation would get stuck really soon. He tried to keep it going, Sheherezad Cas into another step towards wholeness.

"What did you think, Cas?" He asked, bumping his shoulder against the angel's. Cas scrunched his eyebrows towards each over and bowed his head.

"I thought the king's male lovers were given short shift by the scholars. They leap through hoops to prove he was only speaking about female slaves, but he wasn't always."

Cas was quiet for a moment too long, so Dean said:

"What was he like, King Solomon?"

Cas tipped his head back, and braced his arms behind his back, considering.

"He was brash when he was younger, you could feel the seeds of wisdom growing up he dove into everything, he was bound to crack his head--or others--against the bottom of the pool sometime. His time did not have a lot of space for two men to be physically in love, but there was some time and some space, and he took advantage of all of it."

Dean stared and leaned a bit away from Cas's shoulder to look him in the face.

"Cas, are you saying King Solomon was gay?"

Cas looked frustrated but there was an undercurrent of nervousness, shiftiness in his eyes.

"Those terms had little and less meaning in that time. King Xerxes, who beat those Spartan naked men you are so fond of watching on Sam's computer, dressed in women's clothing and had male and female lovers. If I remember my terminology right, it would be reasonable to say King Solomon was, pansexual."

"He didn't care about the plumbing at all?" Dean clarified.

"That is correct. His time was consumed with questions of ruling and of state, but when he did seek out companionship, whether," Castiel looked down at their legs, nearly touching as they sat beside each other, "physical or," rushing on, "emotional."

Cas closed his eyes and seemed to read off the insides of his eyelids, pausing between verbs and nouns like he was translating: "When he says,"

“Like an apple tree among the trees of the woods, so is my beloved among the sons. I sat down in his shade with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste. He brought me to the banqueting house, and his banner over me was love. Sustain me with cakes of raisins, refresh me with apples, for I am lovesick. His left hand is under my head, and his right hand embraces me.”

"He is referring to his lover Isaiah, who had come from what is now known as the Sudan. Often, as long as men produced children or cared for the often-orphaned children of other men, who they slept and shared their burdens with barely concerned other men.”

“Functionally, given the high physical and resource cost of buildings, it was normal for whomever it was convenient to share a bed to do so. Brothers and sisters, not as lovers, just as convenience. It is only really recently that this kind of physical intimacy has become taboo." Castiel's body was wavering towards Dean's, shoulder brushing and finally pushing against his.

Dean thought for a moment and put his hand on the bed behind the angel's back, tipping his shoulder forwards so it rested against the middle of the angel's spine. The angel relaxed into him with a sigh, head hovering over and then finally resting on the hunter's shoulder.

Slightly muffled, he said, "Skin hunger, the need to feed from human contact, has never been so hard to feed as in this time. No one touches each other here. Not even friends." Dean pressed his shoulder a little closer to the angel and said nothing.

He thought, though. He thought a lot. He thought about the tickle of demon’s knives before they tucked themselves under his skin; about the first-rush-brush-flush of a date’s hand under his shirt; of hugging Sammy when he got back. He thought about fights he’d picked in bars and girls he’d fucked outside of them.

He thought about a deep winter night like this one, sitting in the car, waiting for his Dad to call him (but he never did) in the time before he’d gone to get Sam away from Stanford. He remembered how he’d started to itch under his collar, then under his jeans, on the soles of his feet and in his hair.

He thought he had fleas, or some itching-powder had spilled or some curse had taken hold. He rubbed and itched and eventually got going on a walk. He sauntered into a diner, sat and ordered the coffee and pie. The waitress pushed a hand on his shoulder before she left to lodge his order with the cook, and his itching stopped.

It came back a few hours later, and he had an inkling what would take it away again, so he found a crowded bar and surround himself in the mass of old men and young men and old women and young women. And he settled.

His Dad wasn’t an affectionate man but sitting less than 2 feet from another person for hours every day was a form of contact. The occasional shoulder brush was to be expected, and the even rarer shoulder pat could be milked of its emotional power for months, years.

Without him, Dean starved. He knew what it was to starve, for touch and for other things. He couldn’t do that to a friend, when he was so able to help.

He leaned into Castiel and tried to push his warmth and feelings into his friend’s body without using any words at all. Castiel settled into him, keeping their awkward distance but soaking every feeling in. Dean remembered how much faster he’d recovered from his hunger from those few, quick brushes of skin no one could avoid in a crowded watering hole, and, thinking of nearly nothing and keeping it that way, reached over for the angels hand, gripping it in his.

Castiel let out a little sigh, but didn’t grip him back, just left his hand soft and pulling every piece of attention Dean gave to it into himself. He lost himself in the warm feeling, the connection and the transfer and the calm grace of it. He lost himself and pull such sustenance from it, he couldn’t imagine it stopping.

Dean kept his fingers on the angel’s hand until long after it had passed from awkward, down into something like comfort, back into awkward when Castiel laid back against the pillows, arranging his feet behind Dean’s back but keeping his feather-light grip on his fingers. Their hands were left tangled on Castiel’s bony hipbone and Dean studiously kept his eyes down, away, apart from the juncture of the angel’s thighs.

At some point, Castiel started humming. It wasn’t tuneless, but it was like 6 notes of Amazing Grace followed by 10 of Simple Man followed by 4 of Michael Row Your Boat Ashore. His tune was meandering but his tone through his stubbled lips was clear. He blinked his eyes slow and thoughtful at Dean’s face, and then let them dip closed, then open, then closed again. He turned his head to the side, and then the other, like he was kneading the pillow with his neck.

The angel stopped the humming and the settling when Dean laid a hand on his ankle and let it rest there. He pressed down once, and then released his ankle and hand at the same time. There was a flash of loss, of mourning on the angel’s face, before it closed and shuttered beneath his eyes. He said:

“You should go; I need my rest,” and closed his eyes. Dean felt a surge of warmth, but tamped it down. He heard a whimper when he opened the door to the hallway, and he looked over his shoulder to see the angel on his bed, hands wrapped around his ears, face scrunched in pain.

He felt a flash of unjust irritation—after all that, a few seconds of separation and Castiel was back in hell?—before his own waves of tiredness crashed over him and he closed the door behind him and began walking down the hallway, back to his borrowed car.


	11. Chapter 11

Sam rode along with Dean to the hospital just once, though he didn’t plan go in to see Cas. It was the day before he planned to go on a scouting trip with one of Hester’s allies, one Dean had tried to talk him out of. It was not that they had grown distant while Dean was spending time with Castiel, but more than, given the energy he was spending on the angel and the awareness of what it took to get him running smoothly, Dean had stepped back and seen, in long glimpses, that Sam was doing alright for himself.

 

He listened as Sam described the treaties between angel factions he’d helped broker, the tradecraft he’d learnt in preparation for his mission. He didn’t see a simulacrum of his father or a shadow of his mother, but a man. A person he’d helped raise—he’d _raised_ —and one he’d love above all others. But one who needed his urgent care less than another did at the moment.

 

Sam came along and sat in the car, leafing through his notes on the Leviathan’s speech and eating patterns, preparing himself to infiltrate their ranks. The angels had devised a mask, a glamour for him which would shield him from magical prying, but the more mundane kinds of questions were all his to handle. Dean sat for a moment as the car ticked down with the quiet of Sam in the seat. He felt a hole that had wedged a part of his heart open, leaving it gulping and flexing and raw, filled with its normal filling stuff. He glanced over at his brother and tried to breath in the reality that he would be going on a solo mission and Dean didn’t plan to fight him.

 

Sam would check-in, the angels would keep Dean abreast of his advancements and at any sight of trouble they would pull him out. And if they didn’t, harmed angel or no harmed angel, Dean would hurl himself down the dark path to save his brother. But he didn’t expect that to happen, and so when he stood, a few moments away from another unpredictable afternoon checking Cas’s crazy, he didn’t feel like he was ripping off a bandaid. More that it had fallen off of its own looseness and accord.

 

\--

 

Dean could hear the shouting down the hallway, the older nurse’s voice getting higher and higher. When he saw the on other on-call nurse start jogging up the hallway he jogged with her, fearing what he’d find when they stopped. There was a crowd of nurses standing the doorway, but none of them inside Cas’s room. There was no light coming out of the doorway, but a low moaning, getting louder and lower and softer and higher in irregular intervals.

 

A young male was sitting on the floor across from Cas’s room with another crouched by him, dabbing at a gash above his eye, dripping down the side of his face. He was clutching his arm and Dean cursed. As he shoved his way through the crowd, nurses recognizing him and moving more easily he started to hear patterns to Cas’s moaning. It sounded like pleading, with the word “No” featuring prominently.

 

When he finally pushed past the last nurse he stood free and alone inside the threshold. As his eyes adjusted to the grey dark, his gut plummeted. Castiel was crouched against the wall, hunched over his knees, eyes wide and staring at the corner where Lucifer so often appeared to him. Dean walked towards him slowly, stepping into his line of sight. Castiel’s hands came up like claws protecting his face as he kept staring through Dean to the opposite wall.

 

Dean leaned down and put a slow-moving hand on the angel’s shoulder—he flinched so badly his head bounced off the wall and Dean backed up a step, feeling sick. Castiel rose, and stepped as if to move around him, hand outstretched in classic smiting position towards the cowering nurses. He looked murderous, ready to fight his way out. Dean could imagine the sounds of the hellhounds at his heels, and while he sympathized, the only bodies between Castiel and the sky were those of the nurses and he had to stop him.

 

He tackled him backwards into the wall, wincing as he felt his shoulder press deep into the angel’s stomach. Castiel screamed in fury and then, as quickly as it had come over, his anger passed and he was terrified again, falling to his knees and fluttering his hands at Dean’s shoulders, trying to push him away but unable or unwilling to use his strength to do so. He was yelling “No!” over and over and over again.

 

But Dean couldn’t back up, not if it meant Cas would try to get through the human wall of nurses at the door. He stayed above the angel and slid his hands down the angel’s arms and grabbed ahold of his wrists where they pushed against his chest and shoved them to the wall on either side of Castiel’s body. Castiel shied away, head down, eyes down, tugging at his grip and crying out in terror, eyes again fixed in where Lucifer stood in his mind’s eye.

 

The nurses stood in the doorway and stared as he pinned the screaming man to the wall, face close to his ear and he whispered:

 

"He's not there, Cas, he's not real. I've got you."

 

Castiel slowed his tugging at the sound of Dean’s voice, his breathing restarting and pushing against Dean’s chest. He glanced over his shoulder at a sound, as saw that the older nurse was just finishing closing the door a look of strange sympathy masking his lined face.

 

When he returned his gaze to Castiel’s face, the angel growled, eyes narrowed. The room was dark, only lit in pieces by the slices of moon. Dean got him up onto the bed, but in the tussle that ensued half-way he ended up seated on the bed with the angel’s head pressed into his chest, half-sitting on his leg. Cas pressed his ear closer to Dean’s chest. Dean was afraid he might, what, bite? Headbutt him in the chin? He didn't know, but he tried to lean away. Cas didn't seem to notice, and fore-headed him into the mattress, then pressed his ear even harder.

 

He said something, low and calm, like his hair wasn't wild and his arms weren’t still shaking with left-over adrenalin.

 

"What, buddy?" Dean said from his back.

 

"I made that. I made that beat."

 

Dean froze and raised his hands, pulling one arm out from under the angel.

 

"Yeah, you did man. When you gripped," he felt Castiel's face move--he was mouthing the phrase, "me tight and raised me from perdition. Hey, did I ever say thank you for that?"

 

The angel huffed and pulled himself into a sitting position, like they were at a normal diner chat. "No, but I wouldn't expect you to. It was my job."

 

Dean sat up too, uncomfortable but much happier discussing metaphysics with awake Cas than wrestling not-present Cas into non-nurse harming submission.

 

"Who gave you that order, Cas?"

 

Castiel froze, and Dean froze too.

 

"Raziel. Raziel said he came bearing Michael's command."

 

Dean nodded. Castiel weaved to the side, seeming to lose focus so Dean started to steam-plow on, when Castiel said in a sharp tone:

 

"Why are you here?"

 

Dean stopped cold and replied, low and clear.

 

"I'm here for you, Cas. I've been here."

 

"No. No you haven't. You _left_. You _left_ me _here_." The angel said, shoving Dean off the cot with both hands. Dean stumbled to his feet, standing back, spine a bath of icewater.

 

"Well, fuck you too, Cas. I had to get some fucking space. After what you did, I couldn’t forgive you like that. I couldn't--you notice Sammy isn't here?"

 

Cas huffed, "Sam's already forgiven me. He knows what I did was necessary, though now regrettable. He has always been the more practical of you two."

 

Dean felt a bunching in his arms, like they were getting ready for a punch. He squeezed his fists down, whispering harshly in his mind that Cas couldn't control where his moods took him. Memories of Lucifer had tapped all of his reserve and let it mix willy-nilly with all of his other emotions, leaving him one big swirling, unpredictable mash-up of reactions and perceptions. But that didn't give him a free ride either.

 

"I would never hurt a friend like that, not even for the end of the world."

 

"But you did, Dean. I saw you, in Zachariah's future universe. You killed your friend and tortured others."

 

Dean yanked himself away, eyes staring and body standing, hands tight at his sides.

 

"What, what? How, were you there? Watching me as I got fucked around like that? As I had to watch _Sammy_ turn into the devil?"

 

"No, Dean, I wasn't there because it never happened. I downloaded it from Zachariah's stored memory files when I ruled heaven. There was no there, there, but merely a potential future. One where you were worse than I ever was."

 

Dean saw bits of the dawn coming in through the blinds and refused to engage.

 

"Whatever, Cas.” Dean sat again, now maintaining a careful distance between their thighs. “Tell me about it more when you've got your shells in order." He paused to breath, pushing out all of the frustration of the last couple of minutes in harsh, short breaths.

 

"You want to do the thing? The exercise the doctors taught you?"

 

"The doctors believe I am a manic-depressive drug addict. Their diagnoses are less than worthless."

 

"Yeah, yeah, Cas, but there's useless pills and there's possibly useful training for broken brains. Come on," Dean wheedled, feeling his voice creep into the register he used to get preteen Sammy to eat his pasta sauce, "Just do one."

 

"You have to do it too."

 

"Ok," Dean said easily. It wasn't like he had anything else going on right then.

 

"Fine." Castiel said, grumpily. "Where are we?"

 

Dean looked over, "You've got to close your eyes."

 

Castiel glared at him and then obediently closed them. "Fine. Where are we _now_?"

 

Dean closed his eyes too, swaying closer to the angel so he could feel where he was without seeing him.

 

"We're in Lawrence, in the bone yard where Sammy went to hell and you molotov-cocktailed Michael." He felt Castiel shift, hoping it was a nod and not defiance.

 

"Ok, picture the gravestones. They're grey and old. Think about everything you know about them--I know it's more than my puny human mind could comprehend, but for my sake, just riffle through your files on the people in that grave site. Ok, now think about the grass."

 

"What is there to think about, Dean? This is stupid. It is grass."

 

"Nah, Cas, think about it. Is it dark green? Light green? Almost dead? Freshly planted? Move every piece into place until it all fits together, and then hit go. Let the emotions you remember tie themselves to the things you heard and saw and breathed."

 

He felt Castiel take a deep breath.

 

"Ok, what are you feeling?"

 

"Hate." Castiel answered quickly. "Terror. Fear for your, for Sam, for Bobby and for myself. Foreboding for the world."

 

"Ok, good. What do you feel about Michael?" Dean knew this was tough territory. He'd lost Cas a few times when he asked him to think about other angels, because so much of what twisted him up inside was tied to his relationship with his family.

 

"Hurt. Angry. Jealous." Dean paused, and Castiel gasped a little.

 

Carefully, "Jealous, Cas? Why?"

 

Castiel muttered something. Dean leaned over, ear closer to the angel's mouth, eyes still closed

 

"Again?"

 

"He chose you and you chose him." Dean pulled back.

 

"I've chosen you a dozen or more times, Cas. You're the angel I trust; the only fucking angel I would save if given the chance. The only one who's saved me, in the ways that matter. Now, just in that place and just in that moment, tell me what you feel about Lucifer."

 

"Angry. Confused. Hurt."

 

"Why confused, Cas?"

 

"Why didn't he compromise? Why did he need to fall? Why couldn't he work it out with Michael and the rest of us? Was it really so bad in heaven?"

 

Dean nodded. "Ok, that makes sense. Is there anyone else you want to talk about how you felt about?"

 

"No." Castiel said, finality in his voice clear.

 

"Ok, that's fine for now then. Good job."

 

"Don't be patronizing, Dean. I don't need your pity."

 

"Look, man, you don't want to do this, don't do it. But we know it helps, we know you want your head to suck less, and going through your memories and reassigning the right emotions will help. Attitude does nothing but make this shit go slower."

 

Dean opened his eyes and saw Castiel had his head down and was sulking.

 

“You still have to go, Dean.” Dean rolled his eyes, but slithered to the floor, laying on his back with his hands behind his head, Castiel staring down at him. He stared up at the ceiling.

 

“You have to close your eyes again.”

 

“Ok, Cas.”

 

Castiel paused, and Dean heard the creak of releasing springs on the rickety cot. He felt the angel come closer, felt him kneel or sit by his shoulder on the linoleum floor.

 

“Where are you now, Dean.” Dean unfocused his mind, let the space behind his eyelids grow dark and smooth before looking around, trying to focus on a topic.

 

“I’m in the car.”

 

“Alright Dean, describe your surroundings in detail.”  
  
“I’m in the driver’s seat. You’re sitting beside me, but you’re not you you’re,” Dean peeked his eyes open to see Cas’s curious face before closing them again, “You’re Emmanuel.”

 

He kept going: “It’s night, the car is dark. It’s not my baby, it’s that piece of crap Frank said I’d have to drive to get off and keep off of the Levi’s radars.” He could hear Castiel shifting, as though he hadn’t know about baby.

 

“It’s warm, the asphalt has been holding in the sun’s heat and it’s warming the air we’re driving through, more so than other parts of the surrounding fields. The seat is uncomfortable—too ergonomic and plastic fabric-y, not enough black leather and slouchy seats.”

 

“The wind is brushing past the outside of the car, but there’s not much of other sounds, just you and me, breathing together.”

 

“And what do you feel about the car, Dean?”   
  
“It’s shitty. It’s not home, but at least’s it’s moving.” Dean settled back onto his arms a little more, “Moving means _safe_ for Sam and I. It’s hard to catch us and eat us when we’re going down the highway at 70 mph and any car with a backseat is one we can rock the cat naps in. It’s; if it moves, it’s as close to home as anything other than baby can get.”

 

“And me, Dean? What do you feel about me?”  
  
“I feel worried. Scared. Pissed.”

 

“Why scared, Dean?”

Dean paused, with his answers flying before his eyes, words like “friend” and “betrayer” and “lonely” and “hate” all flying and crowding, blowing up sizes until they filled the screen of his mind and then shrinking into invisibility.

 

“You know what? Fuck this.” He said, snapping his eyes open and sitting up. He clapped his kneeling friend on the shoulder, "We're done for the night. Why don't you get some shut-eye?"

 

"And where are you going to go, Dean?" Cas asked, hostile, struggling to keep up.

 

"I'll be here, Cas. Just look over whenever you need to remember, but I'm here until you're up for the day."

 

Castiel glanced at the window, but didn't comment that the sun was fully over the horizon and it was anyone's definition of "day." He just settled into the creaking bed, and Dean absently lifted the sheet from where it had fallen to the floor at the foot, draping it over the supine angel and tucking to top edges under the thin mattress to give it a better chance of keeping him covered during the upcoming flailings.

 

Dean didn't read that night, but instead stared at the angel. He was down for the count, breathing slow and steady, body still and relaxed. He was sleeping better these days.

 

Dean felt a clench in his chest and scooched forward, hand raising to ghost up the sleeping angel's side without thinking. He knew the angel could sense him, feel him inside his sparking self-absorption. He knew the wrong twitch, the wrong flying thought could open up the gateway to another episode, another hour of screaming and crashing and too-too-too-close physical restraint.

 

Dean’s only safety had been in Cas remembering enough of who he was not to hurt him, and so he didn’t let go, not at Castiel’s terrified sounds and not even when he could see how distraught his touch made Castiel. He had leaned in closer a few hours ago, trying to still the angel’s frantic tugging, trying to keep him away from the nurses. He could only hope that getting into and keeping behind Castiel’s guard would give him some measure of protection from Castiel’s violent potential, that his body would remember the safety of his presence even if his mind would not help.

 

His hand was still over his ribs when a nurse walked by, peering in through the door. Dean yanked back his hand, but didn't move back. The nurse stared at him long and hard, but then nodded and walked away. Dean tucked a stray bang behind the angel's ear and finally settled back into his chair, willing his eyes open and focused on the book. He scooted his chair a tiny bit closer and pressed his knee to the bed frame, keeping the pressure up even as he drifted off.


	12. Chapter 12

They tried the exercise again the next day.

 

"Where are we now, Cas?" Dean asked, one hand over the angel's eyes and the angel's palm over his own as they sat side-by-side, backs against the tinkling radiator.

 

"In the hospital." Cas said stubbornly.

 

Dean pressed his hand into the angel's face, pinky flattening his eyebrows and thumb gentle on the tip of his nose.

 

At the increased pressure, Castiel calmed and something that had been frothing and rebellious in him stilled.

 

"I'm in the barn, the first time you saw me in this form." Dean nodded. Castiel said quickly,

 

"What do you feel, Dean?"

 

"Pissed," he said quietly, "Scared," even quieter.

 

He turned to Castiel and though the angle was awkward, the pressure over his eyes stayed steady. "You knocked Bobby out like it was nothing. You sparked all of those lights and looked so _alien_. And the pounding on the roof--"

 

Castiel almost choked holding his laughter back.

 

"I'd fallen," at Dean's start, he continued quickly, "Not from Grace, but from the actual sky. I'd," Dean could nearly feel Castiel's forehead heat up with his blush, "Miscalculated the time when I could become corporeal again. I forgot to tuck my wings in, and ended up crashing and rolling over the entire roof before falling to the outside. The ah," Castiel's head turned, like he was, with his eyes closed, searching for the right word, "Display I made with the flashing lights and wing display had more to do with my embarrassment than the necessity."

 

Dean smiled, and felt Cas's hand move with the muscles in his forehead. "So, what were you feeling, Cas?"

 

"Embarrassed," he said immediately, "Shy, dominant," he turned his head again, cocking it to the side, "curious." He nods firmly,

 

"That's what I felt more than anything else. Curious. Curious about you and your reactions; how you'd turned out after I reassembled you; how you'd react to my presence and my vessel."

 

Dean cocked his head, and Castiel could feel the change. He continued:

 

"We'd been trained to think humans worshipped us. Raphael showed us visions of angel statues in gardens, on buildings, guarding graves. He told us humans were subservient and servile. But," and Dean could _hear_ Cas's totally un-sneaky sneaky smile here, "I'd done my own looking. Men in wings dancing in clubs for money, women in wings selling underwear. On earth, there seemed to be a general lack of reverence."

 

Castiel chuckled, and the sound echoed oddly off of the linoleum floors. "I'd expected you to be more respectful, given your background."

 

"My what?" Dean's shoulders wanted to whip around and tense, but the heater had just whirred on and Cas, well, Cas was warm. His voice came out lazy and sleepy, and Cas started sounding more and more alert.

 

"Your affection for orders and rules. Your need to be commanded. Your father instilled a nearly religious devotion in you, Dean. You know tha.,"

 

Dean was working through whether this was an insult he needed to respond to, or a truth he'd rather ignore, when Cas continued:

 

"But you hated me," Dean did move then, eyes snapping open, pulling Cas’s wrist away and facing Cas, pulling his back up straight.

 

"No," he said clearly, "I never, _ever_ , hated you, Cas."

 

Cas chuckled again, and this time it made Dean's skin crawl a little.

 

"You certainly had no respect for me, nor interest in my help. I was alone on earth to guide you and your treated me like a hellhound come to call."

 

Dean grabbed Castiel's chin. He turned him his eyes opened. Dean stared at him until he made eye contact.

 

"I have never, and will never, hate you, Cas. I've been scared witless, I've been pissed, I've even mourned you, but I have never, and will never, hate you." Castiel ducked his head, and without applying enough pressure to bruise, Dean could not get him to raise it again. He felt liquid drip on his fingers where they gripped the angel's chin.

 

Embarrassed for his friend and wanting to cover, he slipped his hand behind his neck and pulled his face in to rest on his chest. He wrapped an arm around his shoulders and Cas moved his knees so they were on either side of Dean's leg.

 

He didn't shake or sob, and when he shook his head Dean could feel it was angrily at himself, but Dean kept a hold on him, drawing him in until the angel was half-sprawled across his lap. As his head began to still, Dean's hand began to wander, smoothing the angel's hair down his neck, smoothing the too-soft shift over his shoulders.

 

The movement was smooth, and became hypnotic. He dropped his eyes closed at first to focus on the feeling, but as they got heavier and heavier he wondered if Cas would be ok if he fell asleep.

 

\--

 

Dean woke up feeling stiff but warm. He felt a blanket slide down his arms; he was sitting with his back against something thickly-ribbed and unyielding. He opened his eyes, twitching his hips experimentally to see if he could still feel the weight of his weapon. He could and when he opened his eyes, he saw Castiel crouched beside his legs, face inches from his face, staring.

 

"Wow, creepy much, man?"

 

Castiel sat back with a huff. "I was monitoring your circadian rhythms; nothing could be more natural."

 

Dean sat up, all of Castiel’s blankets, including the fitted sheet falling off of him, rolling the tension from his shoulders.

 

“I didn’t mean to make you strip your bed, I would have been fine.”

 

“You were getting cold; I slept on you too. For the sake of warmth.”   
  
Dean flushed and groaned, rolling forward on his knees.

 

Castiel’s hand was on his shoulder, pushing him back as his head swam.

 

“You’ve been asleep for hours; you should probably wait until your blood resumes proper circulation.”

 

“Cas, man, not to sound ungrateful, but why did you move the bed to me, rather than me to the bed?” Castiel quirked his head and Dean rushed on,

 

“I mean, not that it’s your job to move me or anything, but I was just,” Dean trailed off, not sure what he was just.

 

Castiel ducked his head, “I didn’t want to chance waking you. I know why you don’t get enough sleep and I don’t know if I could move you softly enough. You’re a very light sleeper, Dean, probably because your father never let you feel safe.”  
  
Dean shrugged Cas’s hand off, saying, “And that shit is too heavy for this time of day. You got the time?”  
  
“It is 4pm in the timezone where we are currently residing, a little after.” Dean stretched again, and Castiel’s head found its way to his shoulder.

 

“Hey, you ok man?” He asked. Castiel was funny about physical contact. Sometimes he nearly craved it, sometimes it freaked him the fuck out. Sometimes those two reactions were sandwiched between each other.

 

Castiel turned his head into Dean’s shoulder, hiding his eyes.

 

“I’m in the barn.” He murmured. “I’m standing in front of you. Your knife is in my heart,” Dean hand clasped the back of Castiel’s head, holding in closer but Cas continued,

 

“I’m standing in front of you, and I’ve never felt more naked, or more alive. It’s the beginning of my true life.”  
  
Dean didn’t know what to say, so he let that sit there, the hum of the heater rushing against his back and the heat of the angel’s face pushing through to his heart.


	13. Chapter 13

He just couldn't fucking take it anymore. Cas didn't do anything particularly awful--just glare at him and say he hated him for making him fall from grace--and Dean. Just. Couldn't. He booked it past confused nurses and seeing the outside of the hospital for the first time in 18 hours. He threw himself into his ugly fucking car and pealed out of the parking lot, whatever shitty radio he could get blasting.

 

It fucking sucked. Cas would get a bit better--his eyes hadn't turned red, he only spent part of the day caught in borrowed memories of torture and biting dogs and whipping demons--but he was still really, really bad. He still couldn't hold a conversation about anything other than himself, couldn't talk about most of their experiences together because he couldn't slot together his memories of Lucifer enough to keep them separate.

 

And Sam had shared a lot of shitty memories. His own of hell didn’t even compare.

 

Dean was _trying_. He didn't expect points for effort, but usually when he put his back into something--opening a door, solving a case, getting laid--he got it eventually. But no, not this time, Winchester. This time, he got to spend hours watching his friend in brutal pain.

 

He drove away, away from Cas's hospital _and_ away from his motel room that he still had time on. He couldn't call Sam and deal with Sam's sad cat face at seeing him run any more than he could deal with Cas's enduring crazy.

 

But the farther he drove, the more uncomfortable he got.

 

He thought it was the shitty seat design, all polyester blends bending his back into stupid, ergonomic shapes it wasn't used to. Hospital chairs didn't try and force him to sit a healthy way; he had no idea why his car thought it ought to. But his breath was coming tighter and he had this _ache_ under his breastbone.

 

It was around his diaphragm. It felt sort of like gas to start with, then stomach cramps. Then his eyes started to water and his temples ache. He pulled off the road, getting ready to call Sam cause it felt like he'd driven through a curse web thrown up by another shitty witch. As he fumbled with his phone, he thought viciously, if it was a witch at least he could have something to kill soon.

 

Then a drop of water fell on his hand. He looked up, to see if he'd left the window cracked or there was a crack in the ceiling or _something_ and he felt a drop slide down his face. Then another. His breathing hitched and the pressure around his eyes got stronger and stronger.

 

He was crying. Dammit.

 

All he kept seeing, over and over, was Cas's foot, flopping to one side and the other as he writhed in pain. He wanted to put his hand on his ankle, another on his knee, hold him still, hold me down, hold him together. But he was afraid that if he tried, the angel would throw him off, or torque his ankle as he blindly struggled.

 

Dean knew Cas didn't mean anything by it, but when he glowered up at him, or cowered, or stared in utter unrecognition, it crept into Dean's heart and soured it. It made it hard from him to pull his foot off the gas, to open the car door.

 

He's spent 15 minutes just staring at the lock on his car door that morning, willing himself to open it and go see Cas. He knew every moment he waited, Cas would get worse, get lonelier, get madder. But he couldn't do it.

 

The hospital _smelled_. Cas didn't, thank angels for bizarre hygiene, but the other patients couldn't clean themselves up and so, when he swung himself into his crappy loaner car, he could _smell_ the disinfectant wafting off his jacket and surrounding him while he slept.

 

There were things he treasured about his time with Cas. When Cas got silly and mussed his hair, or solemn and added the weight of his head to Dean's shoulder, or even just slept, finally still and peaceful. Especially that, because Dean knew, how could he not know, that in sleep Castiel could get free.

 

Dean had wondered what he did while he slept, what he dreamed of. He wondered and wondered, until one day, earlier in the week, he'd seen Cas sleeping, face down, arms tucked under his chest. He'd been worried Cas was crying, or having trouble breathing, because his shoulders were heaving.

 

His shoulder blade were moving up and down, but in circles, so they got wider and then narrower, wider and then narrower. The movement reminded Dean of something, and as he crouched down to peer into Cas's face to make sure he was ok, a stray gust blew his sheet to the side, fluttering, and Dean realized what Cas was doing:

 

He was flying.

 

Dean stayed there, crouched and frozen, as Castiel moved his shoulders as if they were the anchors of wings and flew. It was minutes or hours, but Dean watched his friend.

 

When another patient started screaming, Castiel jolted and flipped onto his side, face away from Dean, and within minutes he was shaking and moaning from another hallucination, foot flopping and flopping, but Dean had seen it.

 

Castiel dreamed of flight.

 

\--

 

Dean was reading again, this time out of Leviticus. He'd gotten to the place one California Sunday school teacher termed the "begats." Enough to send anyone to sleep.

 

Castiel was thrashing, quiet but in pain, on the bed. Dean had tried to talk him into remembering where he was, had even leaned over and tried to wrap him in his arms. After earning a shoulder to the jaw and a knee to the side, he backed off and told Cas his plan:

 

"Cas, I'm here, I'm here, I'm just going to sit over here and read, ok, man?"

 

There was no response from the harmed angel, just the rustle of disturbed sheets.

 

“Also on the fifteenth day of the seventh month, when you have gathered in the fruit of the land, you shall keep the feast of the Lord for seven days; on the first day there shall be a sabbath-rest, and on the eight day a sabbath-rest.”

 

Cas didn't ease, but Dean kept on.

 

“You shall keep it as a feast to the Lord for seven days in the year. It shall be a statute forever in your generations. You shall celebrate it in the seventh month.”

 

He didn't know why he was reading in order; it wasn't like he'd ever read the thing all the way through anyway. He hoped, he had the inkling that Cas would come to enough to bitch at him about how inaccurate it was, or tell him side-eyed stories about what really happened to Goliath.

 

He continued:

 

“You shall dwell in booths for seven days. All who are native Israelites shall dwell in booths, that you generations may know that I made the children of Israel dwell in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God. So Moses declared to the children of Israel the feast of the Lord.”

 

But Cas kept being in pain and Dean was getting no comfort from these words. He paused extra long between paragraphs and nearly stopped altogether when Castiel gave a particularly hard thrash and a wrecked-sounding moan, dumping his sheet to the floor. Dean slipped his finger out of his place and slid to his knees, pulling the sheet into a bundle and then shaking it out.

 

He laid it over the angel, and watched as the pure white, unlined sheet conformed to the momentarily-still angel's form, clinging to his thighs and knees first, then his chest and finally his stomach, before getting twisted up in the next roll of pain coming off of the angel.

 

Dean backed away and sat in the chair by memory, eyes never leaving the scrunched-closed eyes of his friend. He flipped the bible open, and began reading the first line his eyes caught.

 

“My beloved is white and ruddy, chief among ten thousand. His head is like the finest gold; his locks are wavy, and black as raven. His eyes are like doves by the rivers of waters, washed with milk and fitly set. His cheeks are like a bed of spices, banks of scented herbs.”

 

He started: this was one passage he'd read before. It was the closest thing to porn he'd found in the good book and there had been a few weeks at a parish middle school where it had been his only entertainment.

 

He felt a twinkly flush start up his chest, heading for his neck and chest. He decided to ignore it, and fell into the rhythm of the poetry.

 

“His lips are lilies, dripping liquid myrrh. His hands are rods of gold set with beryl. His body is carved ivory inlaid with sapphires. His legs are pillars of marble set on bases of fine gold. His countenance is like Lebanon, excellent as cedars.”

 

He'd always loved the sly imagery. Sam might say it was orientalist, but when Cas had said he'd gone to Jerusalem for that oil, he'd pictured it covered in the fruits of Solomon's poems and full of people like the ones hed read about.

 

“His mouth is most sweet, yes, he is altogether lovely.”

 

Dean kept going. He let the wrapping lines surround him with a sense of comfort, of beginning, middle, and end, rather than this constant back-and-forth, this 6 steps forward 5-7 steps back with Cas.

 

He liked that these stories had a structure, had a defined arc. Some days, he was lucid and bitchy and wonderful. And others he curled into a ball in the corner and rocked and moaned about hell.

 

Dean could understand. The urge to crawl into a ball and stay that way until the world fixed its damn self was one he got all the way. And he was trying to step away from the "rub dirt on it and walk it off" school of healing his father had specialized in. Raising Sam, Dean had alternated between trying to be more compassionate and supportive of his brother's interests outside of hunting, and keeping Sam in line enough that when John checked in, there were no major corrections to his dreams or attitudes they would all have to suffer through.

 

But with Cas, his job wasn't to care until someone came to give him orders. There was even less of a rulebook than he'd had with Sam.

 

A thought that had been haunting him for a few days floated to the surface, making him stumble as he read aloud. _Cas might not ever get better._

 

This hospital was full of people who's family only visited them monthly or weekly, who had run through the same appointments and pill schedules and bedwettings for two decades, and could expect to continue those routines until they died. Broken parts, PTSD or miswired memories or the trauma of being an immortal being in a mortal body, all of those could be enough to render Cas unable to fight or function.

 

_Cas might not ever get better._

 

Dean let these words sink like stones into his heart as his mouth read on autopilot:

 

“Oh, that you were like my brother, who nursed at my mother’s breast! If I should find you outside, I would kiss you; I would not be despised. I would lead you and bring you into the house of my mother, she who used to instruct me. I would cause you to drink of spiced wine, of the juice of my pomegranate. His left hand is under my head, his right hand embraces me.”

 

He took a breath, saw the angel was still writhing, and kept going:

 

“Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm; for love is as strong as death, jealousy as cruel as the grave; its flames are flames of fire, a most vehement flame. Many waters cannot quench love, nor can the floods drown it.”

 

His first impulse was to book it. Just: run. And it didn't matter that Cas had lifted him screaming from hell, or saved Sam's mind for them. It didn't matter that Dean's heart tweaked every time Cas winced in pain or that his skin felt raw when he hadn't touched the angel in a while.

 

He could leave, and Castiel would get worse, and Dean might never have to know.

 

The urge to run pulled at him, fired his hamstrings up and tightened his shoulders. But he heard his voice and the slightly slower movements of the angel under the covers, and the book felt heavy in his lap, pinning him down. He kept reading.

 

He kept on.


	14. Chapter 14

Dean took a walk in the late morning, while Cas was still sleeping. He looked so much better with the warm winter light flittering through the curtains, leaving his antiseptic white walls golden with tree-filtered light and feeling warmer for all of the cold held back by the thin windows.

 

He knew leaving Cas while he was sleeping could commission a whole batch of issues, but he didn't have another way to get distance and he needed to recharge. He knew he should be able to handle this, this putting Cas back together but he just felt more than raw, more than tapped out: he felt bone dry. Like Cas's hurt had rubbed against him, rubbing off his skin and muscles and was currently polishing its way through his bones, a bit of cartilage from having nothing left.

 

He walked until he found a backwoods rose garden, the project of some local donor to Cas's class C hospital. He crouched among the fading bushes and tried to imagine a better future than the one he could feel himself careening towards.

 

Dean would live in a ramshackle and slow-to-repair two story, with a sloping back yard down to a creek and a bit of forest, a country road a distance up from their yard. Their, because Dean would share it with someone, with Cas. He'd make them two rooms and they'd be comfortable, and there'd be blankets on the couch so they could crash in front of the TV if they wanted to and bookcases for all of Cas's nerdery and anything Sam wanted to share.

 

There would be a big, covered garage where Dean could work on baby in the winter, and dinged up wood floors with thick, cheap carpets. The house would smells of life. Coffee smell on the wall next to the percolator, dog smell where the dog slept, Dean smell in Dean's room and Cas's smell in Cas's.

 

Maybe the house would smell like them, together.

 

Dean hadn't had a lot of space for day-dreaming since he got back from hell. He hadn't built himself a dream house in his memory since he was little, hadn't spent time thinking about a future free of or torn from the road.

 

But he had thought about Cas.

 

On long car rides, on tired highways when Sam napped in the back and Cas road along in the front seat, yeah, he'd thought about it. It started the normal flashes any sexual person had when looking at another--what do you look like with your clothes of? On your back? Turned on your side? How would you fit in my mouth? How would you move under my hands?

 

Idle, random flashes Dean had had to endure from his jerk!brain since he was 12 and featuring pretty much anyone he'd spent more than 5 days with.

 

He suppressed them, like he'd been doing to all of those other idle, random flashes.

 

But then, watching Cas beat into Alistair, his flashes got a heck of a lot less random and idle. Laying, all fucked up, in the hospital bed, he could feel the press of Cas's hand on his, Cas's thigh pressing into his as he sat next to him on the bed (not that he did, just that Dean could imagine it while he was getting into consciousness). He’d thought, and he’d thought.

 

Dean sat himself backwards onto the dirt, damp earth passing cold and wet directly through his jean to chill his skin. He brought his knees up to his face, hiding it, hiding himself from himself. He rocked and then stilled—the motion, the self-stimulation that kept Cas comfortable didn’t do any more for him that make him feel crazy.

 

He was behind the rose bushes, where only people standing at the rooms’ windows could see him. Castiel’s room was on the other side, and there was no way he could see him here.

 

Dean let out one harsh breath after another, sucking in the shockingly sharp air through his teeth until they ached and felt ready to clink in his mouth.

 

His hands were tucked between his knees, thighs beginning to ache at holding it all together, and he let them flop on the cold, hard ground. He felt the pricks of some uncomposted rose thorns and thistle stickers, the slime and crunch of leaves in various states of decay. He pressed his palms into the uneven ground, relishing the stab of pressure from a rock indenting his skin, a burr slipping under his skin.

 

It felt real, manageable, healable with a little time and a little care. He didn’t dig his hands deeper, didn’t go for blood, but kept the pressure, kept his hands close to the source of the cold and the prickling. He breathed down to his fingers and pulled that cold up his arms, into his chest, into his heart. He breathed it in until its simple message of stillness and calm stilled his wavering spirit.

 

He worked his way up his own body, taking an accounting of it. His feet were sore from staying in the same shoes for days at a time, his back a little numb from sitting in that damn orange chair.

 

He took deep breaths, yanking them down to the pit of his stomach and letting them whistle back out through his nose. He torqued his head to the side and then the other side, feeling his tendons pull as his muscles refused to unclench. He tipped his head all the way back, eyes snapping open to star at the steel-grey sky as he tipped his body backwards.

 

He eased himself back onto his elbows, keeping total eye contact with the sky above him. He could feel something in those close clouds, pulling him out of himself, pulling from his chest like a rope of spirit to the sky, hooking him to the rising sun. He let it pull his chest up, and then let it relax again, pulling at the strain. He felt the rope unravel and then reravel, connecting itself to the base of his stomach, to his thigh bones, to his ankles.

 

A quick mist started pricking its way out of the sky, coldly dotting his skin, pulling him awake but also driving him backwards, pushing his soul wider away from his body, opening and closing doors at the same time.

 

He stopped breathing for a moment, fear and suspicion kicking into gear, but he knew how evil and purported good felt, how flawed creatures pretending God’s grace felt, and this wasn’t it.

 

It was something like comfort, something like support, and longing, and those deep breaths, to the very pit of his stomach.

 

Running in the bass-track of his mind, he could hear Sam idly lecturing on the Latin roots of some of the words they used in incantations all of the time. He’d been inside, in a library new enough not too many people were around and they could speak in normal voices.

 

“Inspire, perspire, expire, conspire, aspire, they all come from the Latin word, ‘spirare,’” Sam’s eyes hadn’t lifted from his book, and he was flipping idly, scanning for the monster’s face they needed for their Dad’s hunt.

“’Breath in,’ ‘for breathing,’ ‘away from breath,’ ‘to breath together,’ ‘breathing out,’ all pretty basic literal meanings.” But then Sam paused and looked up under his shaggy bangs, “but the trick here is, Romans believed that the soul was breath, one of their words for it was ‘inspiratio.’”

 

“So when we conspire, inspire, or expire, we’re not just ‘breathing together,’ ‘breathing in,’ and ‘away from breath,’ we’re ‘souls together,’ ‘souls pulled in,’ and ‘away from our souls’. Romans thought the soul was a verb, something you _did_.”

 

Dean nodded then and he nodded now, breathing in, and feeling it fill him down to the bottom of his self, feeling his soul refill.

 

He stood, soul and lungs full, and stepped back inside the dim hospital corridor.

 

\--

 

When Dean returned, Cas was breathing, slowly and surely. He didn't seem to be in the throws of a dream. Dean sat beside him on the bed. He hadn't been sure angels could sleep unaided by demonic taint or encroaching humanity. But sure as breathing, Cas was lying there, sleeping.

 

Dean had let his hands rest in his lap, but eventually his shoulder blades and the muscles around them had started to ache and then go a bit numb from the position, so he tried to settle his hands back behind him. Only to be caught up against the angel's body.

 

He froze, afraid he'd woken his friend up. But nothing, no change in movement. He nudged his fingertips against him again, sliding them under the covers and under the angel's side where it pressed into the thin sheet. He felt warm and solid and _safe_.

 

Dean counted Cas's breaths, in and out. He counted the shadows and tried to add them to the spots of sunlight and see what color they equaled. He tried to read meaning into the shapes and smudges on the wall, but when he recognized a streak of blood from when Cas had thrown Meg into the bed frame and she's stood up faster than humanly possible, whipping her head and busted lip around, he stopped. The wall would tell him nothing but pain.

 

He craned his neck backwards a little, to catch site of the angel's face. It was mostly still, slow emotions working their way across his features. He watched his breath work its way up from his chest through his neck and out his nose, then back in, the slight arch of his back as he pulled the air in and the resulting flex when he let it go.

 

Dean couldn't believe how monochrome Cas's hair made the pillow seem, how pale his face was without his dark suit and beige trench coat. How small he looked.

 

Dean had old instincts banging on his mind's door here. Instincts telling him to look away from the man, to pull his fingers out from under his warm body, to step back and avoid contact, no matter how mutually needed it was. He could hear the pounding on his gates, hear his father's voice ordering him to keep away from this boy or that one, or one fucking fag joke too many.

 

He didn't know what Cas would think, either in his right mind or as he now was. He knew the angel said he cared for him, as he tried to imply he did for the angel. He hadn't responded well at all to the brothel, but paid sex freaked a lot of human guys out. He had kissed Meg, but whether that was a bid for attention or acting out how he thought a human should behave in that circumstance or, given what he knew now, an insanely nervous reaction to knowing he was likely to be discovered for the King of Heaven lie he was living, Dean didn't know.

 

Watching Cas try to lick the back of the demon's throat had done more than blow up his rage-of-meter. It had tingled in the back of his soul, had sent spurt of _mine, off, NOW!_ thrilling down his spine and into his clenching fingers. It had hurt to see and hurt to pretend not to see. He'd heard a song rising, buzzing like plugged-in but unplayed guitars, in his ears.

 

He heard a noise now too, the banging of his father's fist on his mind's window, daring him to answer back, ordering him to stop what he wanted to do. He stood, stepping away from the angel’s bed, taking a seat in the opposite chair.

 

He thought about that voice, about those jokes, about his life's first experience of non-family-affection and love and how his father had driven the other boy away. He knew intimately the life his father had envisioned for him, one of suppression of half of his interests. One of hiding. He took a breath, leaned forward and pressed his hands into the thin mattress, inches from Cas’s sleeping self, And he chose another path. He stepped farther into his own mind, his own understanding of his soul and felt what he felt.

 

He turned and let his eyes sweep, fully open and fully alive, down Cas's supine form. Let them drift into the hollows and full spaces of his form, as he could see them under the white blanket. Let himself wonder and enjoy what was good about the sight that was before him. Wondering what might come of lifting the sheet off, if Cas was whole and warm and welcoming, rather than clinging to the rocks of a lighthouse in a mind-wrecking storm.

 

But Dean settled back, clutching his own elbows with slowly whitening fingers.

 

There was no place for that now, for them, as they were, as Cas was, shit, as fucked as _Dean_ was. He couldn’t see further than the next meeting, the next day, the next time he crashed into his motel room bed and pulled the thin-yet-scratchy sheet over his bare chest.

 

There were still the Levis, still the angels in chaos and the demons below.

 

Still the fact he wasn’t out to anyone as anything but a red blooded heterosexual man.

 

There wasn’t a yard in his future. No garage where he could take his tools out of his baby’s trunk and arrange on in-built shelves. No custom-installed gun-rack in the closet, or salt mixed in the concrete foundation from its pouring.

 

He barely had the skills to survive as an adult on the road—what would he do with city council elections, door-to-door salesmen, water-bills, lost pets, flood insurance? He had no fucking clue what it would take to _live_ a real life, rather than fake one.

 

He tipped his head back, and without Castiel staring him down, unfocused his mind and let it drift, blurry and grey, until it settled with a jerk on an image.

 

It was Rufus’s cabin, where for a little bit he’d put a book down and came back to find it where he put it. Where he’d had to wash dishes he expected to eat off of the next day, and not tromp dirt over the carpet he knew he’d had to clean. He’d begun to wear a his-ass-shaped hole in the couch, begun to listen for the particular sound of the wind in the eaves when he woke sweating in his sleep.

 

But even as he eased into that memory, the itchiness began to rise. The need to look in the newspaper for the next case, to keep practicing his double-barrel until he could handle it as well as his sidearm. The yearning for the pushback of the gas pedal under his feet.

 

He had a place to put his book: under his seat. He had a carpet he needed to keep clean: the carpet on the floor of his baby. He had a his-ass-shaped place to sit: the drivers’ seat of his father’s Impala.

 

He cricked his neck and thought, _That’s all I need_.


	15. Chapter 15

 

It was too much, Dean thought as he fumed his way out of Cas's room to take a walk around the hospital perimeter. Every time he started to get somewhere with Cas, every time he thought they had something sorted out, the nurses would fuck with his meds or the other patients would fuck with his head during a group session, and they'd be back 6 paces from the dozen they'd made.

 

Cas was in the middle of a forced-check-in with the head psychiatric nurse, who insisted on coming in during a really rough flashback. Dean hadn't been able to convince her to postpone it and he couldn't stand the look of terror in Cas's face as he backed into a corner, nor the knowing pity with which she looked at him.

 

He tried explaining to them, but that reading the Bible was the most substantive approach he'd come up with didn't convince the staff. They all thought he was a religious nut, and had no patience for him or, he thought uncharitably, for Cas.

 

Cas had his shit together well enough that he wasn't blacking out blocks at a time when he freaked out, nor returning to the long-term catatonic state Dean had seen in other overloaded patients and come to dread. He just rocked and whimpered. It was awful and sad but not more so than watching any friend lose control like that.

 

Dean hitched his hip against an outer wall and bowed his head, texting Sam:

 

_Gonna be here a few more hours; it's a bit rough today._

 

Immediately, the reply came back:

 

_Do what you have to for Cas. I’ve got this covered._

 

Sam could only text sometimes, but having a life outside of work was part of his cover with the Levis. Dean smiled a little, but then he froze. Before his conscious mind understood the sound, his heart cracked crumbled a little bit in his chest.

 

Crying. Cas was crying and he could hear his small, choked and utterly defeated sobs through the window over his head.

 

Something in Dean's chest snapped and realigned. Calm and sure, he marched back inside and asked the duty nurse what it would take to check Cas out.

 

No, not in the future.

 

Today.

 

_Right now._

 

She looked at him strangely, but got the on-duty doctor. It took hours and promises and questions and prescriptions and 10 different check-ins with Cas, but before full-dark took the last of the day's light Dean had Cas and they were heading out.

 

\--

 

Cas looked disoriented and whenever he could, kept his eyes locked on Dean. Not making eye-contact, not asking questions, but with questioning eyes and a clear need for comfort.

 

Dean didn't have any to give. He'd just spent hours digging through extensive and potentially ruinously expensive medical forms to get this angel out and what did he have? A broken angel, wearing ragged white scrubs, clutching his wadded up trench coach and, yes, within it, the Bible Dean had been reading to him out of. Dean didn't know what to make of these lingering stares, but when Cas put his hand over his on the gear-shift, Dean slid his fingers away. That made Cas flinch and Dean froze, and relented into his touch a bit.

 

Cas's eyes stayed fixed on the side of his face the entire short drive, and just before he pulled into their motel parking lot Dean swerved away, continuing down the road until his found a copse of trees they could drive under. The cool of the shade was a sharp contrast to the warming heat of the falling sun, and Cas's gaze got not more, but then also no less, questioning.

 

Dean took his foot off the break, listening as the car ticked down to quiet.

 

"You may be wondering why I got you out." Castiel didn't move, but in his stillness Dean took a permission to go on.

 

"I don't know what you were getting out of that place anymore." Dean was talking fast, and he felt himself whirling around his point like a dervish without a cause.

 

"I didn’t like being alone." Cas said in a small voice. “I didn’t like the noise or the smells and the people didn’t help. Except Meg, but I only saw her in group, and she’s a hell-spawn.”

 

"Yeah," Dean said, "I get that, man. I tried to . . . I tried." At this, Cas nodded. He never doubted Dean tried his best for him, but there were nights and nights when he hadn't had anything to hold onto but the hallucinations and he wasn't much good for anyone.

 

He was broken. He knew that. His mind switched and hopped down rabbit holes and creaked under the weight of millennia of malevolence. He knew.

 

He also knew Dean would never abandon him. He felt guilty about that. Not that chaining Dean to another broken man, another quaking former soldier fighting out his old battles on his ward's skin would be a change in his life. Not that he felt Dean begrudged him the care he knew he took.

 

But he'd hoped for better. When he'd alighted on that barn's rooftop, when he'd fallen the first and second and third times, he'd hoped to be more in Dean's life than a burden. First, he'd wanted to be a door-opener, a guide to paradise. Then a comrade-in-arms--using Dean as a substitute for Hester, and in the end, for Annael. Then, a lover.

 

Dean had never known that piece of him, and that was on purpose. Dean's heterosexuality was less than complete but his inability to split the threads between friends and wards, and his lack of experience with the existence of anyone who cared more for him than anyone else, Castiel did not believe they had a chance in this lifetime.

 

So he tried, tried to be who Dean wanted and needed, without pressing too much weight down on his overburden back. And when Dean said he was trying, Castiel believed him, as he always did.

 

Believed Dean was trying. And it was more than he deserved.

 

Cas nodded again, all this taking less time than for two of Dean's eyelashes to pull away from each other amidst his blink. “I know, Dean.” He’d paused for long enough that Dean gave him a quick look before remembering what his response was a likely answer to.

 

“Good, then let’s go.” Dean said, pulling out of the shade of the trees and making a U-turn on the highway.

 

They pulled into the parkling-lot and Dean knew he and Castiel would have the room he had for a few more days. Dean thought of getting Castiel his own room, but recoiled. He was taking Cas away from a solitary, sterile-but-always-dirty anonymous room; no good subjecting him to that again within an hour of his escape.

 

He parked by the window of their ground-floor room, switching off the engine and popping the handle down to open the door. He stood and stretched, tension bleeding down his arms and into the asphalt. He looked over, and saw Castiel standing as well, arms folded on the top of the car and face quizzical.

 

“Well, let’s go.” Dean said, trying to sound convinced of his own authority.

 

Castiel just stood there, and so Dean circled the car and put his hand on the angel’s elbow. The angel tensed all over, froze, eyes huge and Dean took a big step back. He sucked in air to apologize and then paused, pulling his eyes to the angels and trying to see what he needed.

 

Cas was shaking, but he was nodding, and then swayed closer to Dean, then stepped closer, then closer still, until they were nearly chest-to-chest: a strong breath from either one of them would press them together.

 

Dean took a shallow breath and lifted his hand to guide Castiel again, and this time when he made contact, Castiel exhaled and leaned into his touch. He turned to his side, facing the motel room door, and when Dean applied a gentle pressure to his elbow, he took a hesitating step forwards, and then another one.

 

Castiel stayed close, so close, for the entire walk, Dean could feel the snap of his coat-belt against his knee occasionally. Dean’s elbow bumped him when he reached into his jacket pocket for the door-card, and shoulder bumped him when he leaned in press it against the sensor.

 

He opened the door and gestured Castiel inside. There was a common area and two short corridors, and Dean strode down the left-most one. He opened a pale blue door and waved Castiel past him, into a room filled with two queen beds.

 

Castiel sat on a bed and gave himself orders for appropriate behavior, based on his observations:

 

1) In this room, a bed might be shared for convenience or for comfort, but never for love,

 

2) Dean was uncomfortable with sleeping in the same space as him and Castiel would have to pretend it was as awkward for him as it would undoubtedly be for the hunter.

 

3) He was supposed to pretend he was fine.

 

Then he felt Dean's hand on his shoulder.

 

"How you doing, man?"

 

Castiel flinched away from the hand. His facade would be a thousand times harder to maintain if Dean was touching him.

 

"I'm fine."

 

Dean smiled fondly, "Don't fucking lie to me Cas. I know this has to be damn hard. You're not good with change and we need to talk about it."

 

"No."

 

Dean sat down next to him, entire leg tucked up against his. "Yes."

 

"No, Dean."

 

"Yes." Castiel turned, murder on his face and in his clenching hands when he saw--that tiny crease at the side of Dean's eyes when he was too tired or scared or worried to hide his fear. He took in his stony mouth and rebar-tight shoulders and, relented.

 

"Yes. Yes, I'm scared. Yes, I'm feeling weak and ill and out of place. What," Cas swallowed and made intense eye-to-knee contact. "What use have I to you here?"

 

"'Use'? Damn Cas, 'Use'?" Dean laughed in a choked way and leaned back. Castiel missed the warmth of his proximity immediately.

 

"No use at all. No more use than Sam when he was laid up with a fever for 10 days in Baton, or me when I had that broken leg, or Mom," he choked and continued, "Mom when she wouldn't tell Dad what we were."

 

He continued in a low voice: "No use but that of a loved one."

 

Castiel edited that sentence into a typo, a mix-phrase. Dean was tired; he truly didn't mean it.

 

Dean scooted back closer and let his hand trail down Cas's back.

 

"This is something we need to talk about, but for now, want to get changed and hit the sack? I bet you'd like to get out of those clothes."

 

Castiel looked down at himself and then back at Dean.

 

"They're all the clothes I have."

 

"Ah!" Dean said, springing up and stepping to his duffle. "I got you these a few weeks ago, on the chance you might want something different someday."

 

And he held up a beige bundle that unfolded into well-worn brown sweat pants, a faded black shirt and a maroon sweatshirt. He pushed Cas’s old scrubs the to side—he didn’t need to remind Cas of that right yet.

 

"And by 'I got' I mean 'I bought at Goodwill,' but hey, that's where my clothes and Sam's clothes come from too." Dean looked thoughtful for a second, "Except for Sam's fruity suit."

 

Given that, to Castiel's knowledge Dean, was the only one of the Winchester brothers who had engaged in homosexual sex and withheld homosexual feelings, as well as obsessively homosocial life choices, the colloquialism of "fruity" seemed to be another of Dean's attempts to imply Sam was weaker because he was more feminine. Castiel believed he had much to discuss with Dean as well, if he was going to persist in using antagonistically inaccurate language.

 

Dean thrust the crumpled bundle at Cas and then twitched towards the door, like half his body thought he should give Cas privacy and half didn't. Cas held the clothes to his chest; they smelled like Dean.

 

He laid them gently on the bed beside himself and started shrugging out of his overcoat. His hands got stuck in the sleeves and he jerked at them, panicking for a moment as he felt trapped and his hands felt useless. Just as he was about to jerk again he felt Dean's cool hands on his forearm, grasping the coat-sleeve and pulling his arm free of it.

 

He kept working at his clothes, and found Dean's hands were helping as well. Rolling his shirt up and over his head, Dean handing him the maroon sweatshirt, bottom open for his hands to slide into the wide-open sleeves easily. Then Dean was kneeling, at his feet--

 

"Dean--"

 

"Let me help." Dean said, and proceeded to unlace his hospital-issued tennis shoes. They were grey on the tops and white on the soles--Cas hadn't worn them outside except for his one walk to Dean's car on his way out, but he'd spent days kneeling in them on the stained linoleum floors. Next Dean rolled down his socks, surprised the angel's feet were still those of an ad salesman: soft, slim, clean. He always expected Cas to have callouses from walking around heaven in sandals or running across fire to get to him--

 

But Dean pushed those memories down.

 

Next, the touchy issue of pants. Dean wanted to help Cas take them off, leaving underwear on, but he always wanted to let Cas make as many decisions as possible. So he rocked back on his heels, tilted his head up, and made uncomfortable eye-contact with the angel.

 

"You won't be comfortable in those pants with the sweats over. You probably want to take them off." Dean paused and looked to the side and down. This was hard. "I can--"

 

"It's alright, Dean, I can take it from here." Cas looked down and began hooking his thumbs into his belt, searching for the clasp. Then Dean's hands came into his view, not touching his body but lightly stilling the backs of his hands.

 

"Cas, look," Dean was looking to the far corner where the beige carpet met the beige wall. "This is awkward, right? I don’t know what you want. I don’t know for sure what I want either. But even if we were to do something, something together as something other than friends, you know we can't do anything, can't make any plans until you're better, right?”

 

“But I'm," he paused and shook his head, like he was trying to fling a thought out of his ear, "But I think we could do this," and his hands moved over Cas's, touching, no, _stroking_ , the backs of his palms. "Or his," and he trailed the back of a knuckle up Cas's side before turning his hand over and gripping the angel's shoulder.

 

He was making fierce, determined eye-contact. "Whatever you need is what I can give, man. As long as it doesn’t hurt either of us." Cas was shocked stock still. His thumbs were still searching for his belt-buckle, though that had started a million years ago. A million years before Dean had suggested, had implied, had given him hope of a future where they were more.

 

"Ok," Cas said, and lay back against the surprisingly soft mattress.

 

Dean chuckled, "That doesn't actually help me get your slacks off." And Castiel sat back up, feeling his stomach muscles bunch oddly under the scratchy-folds of the sweatshirt. He pressed his hands into the comforter and lifted his hips while Dean made short work of his belt, button and zipper. He averted his eyes as he felt Dean slip his feet into the sweats and pull them up his legs, before settled them around his hips.

 

Cas squirmed, getting the clothes on properly, while Dean turned his back and quickly stripped and changed into his own sleeping clothes.

 

Castiel watched, greedily, openly. He filed the sound of the zipper yanking down, watched him shimmy his jeans down his hips, the shoes shucking off. He drank in the shush of the sweatpants sliding back up Dean’s legs.

 

But he most enjoyed the flex of Dean’s back under his shirt, the torqueing of his thighs as he pushed his pants off and then pulled the newer, softer ones back up. He lavished attention on every detail.

 

And for one, tiny, brilliant moment, Dean looked over at him and instead of shame or fear or disgust, he gave a little wink and put an extra, unnecessary swoop of his spine into pulling his t-shirt over his head.

 

Castiel knew Dean didn't usually wear a full sweat-suit to bed. Mostly he favored briefs and an undershirt. Maybe he was trying modesty on for size to, what? Comfort Cas? Cas didn't need any comfort. He needed Dean. He needed--

 

And that's when the hallucinations started.

 

Castiel tipped himself over onto his back, trying, through the screaming memories of whining hounds, to center himself on the bed. He knew his eyes were scrunched closed and his entire face contorted in agony. Dimly, he could hear Dean calling his name. But all he could feel were the acid tongues running themselves into runnels along his body.

 

Now there were pleasant memories so near to his mind's eye, the demons whipped them away, stitched them into something horrible, and returned them to him, malformed and malforming. He writhed in the grip of a dozen hot hands as they trailed knife-claws up his skin, tried to worm away from the scratch of steel wool along his bare legs, and the voices. The screaming, barking, achingly beautiful but perverted voices of the demons rang as echoes of Dean's voice faded from his mind.

 

\--

Cas woke, every muscle in his body frozen in fear and Dean's arm around his waist. He knew it was Dean's arm and no demon's arm because no demon had ever run its fingertips along the small hairs of his arm or hummed in his ear. Cas stopped breathing and Dean jerked, feeling his breath's stop even in his dozing.

 

Cas rolled his head, moving slowly so as not to dislodge the calm of the morning. He saw Dean was still wearing the sweat-suit, eyes shuttered and face calm as a protruding stone. His hands still smoothed up and down the angel's arms, touch light and faint.

 

Castiel tripped back through his memories, finding them full of distorted hellhound panting, but in just the physical realm, he felt Dean's arms keeping him from flying off the bed, out the door, out the _window_. He heard the reverberations of Dean's comforts, though he could not recall the sounds' meaning.

 

Most of all, he felt the snap, the pull back into normal perception, when the weight of reality finally anchored him again to the solidity of the world. That weight had a name, and the owner of that name had hands on his waist, loose and easy to escape. Castiel considered his options:

 

1) Run,

2) Fly,

3) Hide,

4) Talk,

5) Sleep.

 

He figured he could no more sleep now than he could will himself to dream of Heaven, and so chose the only other option which would not disturb his physical connection to Dean.

 

"I'm sorry, Dean." Dean huffed into his neck and slowly withdrew his arm. Castiel missed its warmth every aching inch it slipped away.

 

"Nothing you could have helped Cas. Let's get you up and about."

 

Castiel didn't know what to ask for or to expect, and so when Dean led him to the suitcase and helped him dress for a day’s grocery shopping, he followed. 


	16. Chapter 16

A few days of watching daytime TV together later, Dean tried an experiment. He found them a hunt.

 

Cas had heard Dean describe the hunt to Sam over the phone, and it seemed routine. A small local lake had had some mysterious deaths and there had been demon signs in the area. Unfortunately, nothing had indicated there was a squid, possibly from someone's emptied aquarium, nor that it had become possessed by a particularly unfortunate demon. Castiel was now face-to-tentacle with the abomination on the edge of the dock while Dean speed-talked his way through an exorcism.

 

Cas had always preferred fighting to waiting when he was at full power, and his mind could handle the simple tasks involved here better than the emotional tasks of daily life. All of the busyness of his brain faded away to fight-run-hide-jump-fly-stab-kill-win-die-live-win. He moved smoothly to block and deflect, keeping the demon's attention. But at the last moment, before the demon began to howl its way out of the invertebrate's unspeaking throat, he heard it rumble:

 

"Angel, my little pretty angel."

 

Castiel stumbled back, utterly disengaged and disengaging from the world. He tripped and fell on his ass, feeling the freezing water suck his legs down and seeing only the tiny circle of the world visible from his blackening vision. He wondered if his eyes were turning black as well.

 

He saw the whites of Dean’s eyes before he was lost, following him into the dark, hand outstretched.

 

\--

 

He woke with his chest aching, and his entire body feeling held down by a weighted fisherman’s net, different parts feeling different amounts of artificial heaviness, but all feeling constrained. He could hear the groaning and roiling of hell in his ears, but these weren’t Sam’s memories.

 

They were his own.

 

He had some, small memories of his first trip to Hell. He’d burned through circles and cycles of hell easily on his way to pull Dean free; no demon could touch him in his true form. His fallen brothers, warped though they were, could follow him, hold him down, touch him, but they were few and fewer in the outer rings of the underworld.

 

He had few traumas from that experience. He was a soldier, and fighting and being scraped by claws and swords was his expectation of the mission. But the memories became harder to bear in the law few avenues he’d had to cross, the last antechambers before he’d reached Dean’s living screaming corpse aflame. He’d folded his wings in, cloaked himself in Hell’s filth to avoid the eyes of his brothers.

 

Heaven’s intelligence had failed him, was blank for the last stretch of his journey, and so he played the spy. He’d found the way nearly free, but as he’d stepped between doorways, a trailing black hand had grabbed his pollex and yanked him around. He’d come face to face with one of the fallen, and by the time he’d raised his hands to fight he’d had a hand under his shirt, thick, blood and shit-encrusted hand splayed on his chest.

 

They froze for precious seconds while the demon stayed still, until Castiel raised two hands and shoved himself away. The demon trailed its hand down his arm as he dragged it out and away, and murmured, “My pretty angel.” His face had been wistful and avaricious.

 

Castiel had half-unfurled his wings and fled, bouncing his feet off the ground to give himself flight and bounce off of walls until he found Dean, gripped him and began to rise. He’d had that black mark on his chest, on his _Grace_ , as he reassembled Dean.

 

In the dark hours he’d worked putting the Righteous Man back together, he’d wondered on that look. He’d not been able to place it, but later, after time with Dean, he’d recognized it: yearning. Yearning for family, for touch, for contact.

 

Warped, perverted, hardened into a steely eye and a gripping claw, but from that same place of sweet loss he felt when he now thought on his lost Heaven.

 

That had been the demon in the squid, that was the owner of the one other true voice he’d heard in Hell, other than Dean’s begging one.

 

He could hear Dean now, calling his voice as he pumped water out of his chest on the dock. He could smell the remains of the squid starting to bloat in the late afternoon sun. He opened his eyes and struggled to sit up. Dean’s face was a mask of worry, but when Cas stood, he had a hint of relief.

\--

 

Back in the motel room, Dean and Cas were left, covered in demon squid ink, staring at each other. Cas was fiddling with his coat, running his thumb up and down the back of the lapel. He closed his eyes at each button-anchor, clicking his nail against the loose threads.

 

His other hand was tapping, patting himself as if he was looking for cigarettes. He glanced down at his jacket and began digging at a patch particularly stiff with demon goo. Dean watched, mesmerized, as the chunky flakes drifted down onto the troublingly-colored carpet before he snapped himself out of it and stepped into Castiel's space to grab his elbow. Saying nothing to the angel's startled glance, he maneuvered him into the bathroom. Still not making any form of eye-contact, Dean leaned into the plastic-tub-shower and jerked the hot water on to full, putting it into a shower stream.

 

He held half a hand under the spray until it was hot, then yanked it back and fiddled with the cold knob until it was a medium temperature. Eyes down, he walked back over to Castiel and grabbed the angel's lapel, trying to drag the coat off of him without touching his body. Dean could feel Cas's eyes boring into him, but he didn't want to deal with Cas not knowing he needed to clean up. He gave a harumph when Castiel didn't move to help get the coat off, and slipped his hands under the edges to rise it off his shoulders. He stopped only when two hands like cold, smooth vice-grips pressed around his wrists.

 

"Dean." Castiel's expression hadn't changed and he was owl-facing hard and long, but Dean just didn't have it in him to explain. He stepped back, letting the angel keep his hands, and glanced meaningfully at the pouring shower.

 

"You wish me to shower?"

 

Dean ducked his head, still cautiously mute. Castiel looked about to ask another follow-up question, but then the angel's shoulders settle back and he releases Dean's wrists and steps back toward him, closing the distance Dean had added. He tucked his fingers under the broad lapel over his breastbone and shrugged his coat off, catching its collar as it slid down his hands. He turned, so close his hip brushed Dean's as he turned to hang the coat on the back of the door.

 

"Do you want me entirely unclothed, or will my undergarments do?"

 

Dean gave a start, then shook his head lightly.

 

"Wear what you feel comfortable in, Cas; I'm not going to give you orders."

 

Castiel nodded and began working his tie off his neck, popping half his collar as he did so. Dean's hands clenched at the need to straighten it or pull it down or held unbutton his shirt and press in, faces close--

 

But he just folded his pinky against his palm and squeezed until the joint cracked, focusing on the discomfort. Cas's hands were flying expertly down his chest, but every few buttons his elbows bumped into Dean's chest. Neither of the men backed up. Castiel shrugged the rest of the shirt off, tossing it onto the deep sink counter, black and sparkly like a 1980s strip club.

 

When he moved his thumbs under the hem of his pants, Dean backed up, shins bumping into the cold porcelain-ish toilet. Castiel looked at him, but Dean dove his eyes down, and focusing on unbuttoning his own shirt and sliding two layers off his chest at once. He flipped the seat down, catching it before it rang in the hard-tiled hotel bathroom. He was hooking his thumbs behind his jeans' button when he glanced up, to catch site of an uninterrupted angel flank. _I guess Cas went for full-nudity. Alright._ He yanked his eyes back down again, and focused on getting his pants off without falling over.

 

When his clothes were in a slightly orderly heap and the air was thick with steam, he turned to the angel, who was staring at his shoulder. Dean gestured the angel into the shower and then, once he was under the spray, stepped in, keeping a careful foot of distance between their naked skins. Dean turned around, realizing he left his shampoo bottle in his bag, then glanced over at the strictly-above-the-waist view of his friend.

 

He gestured at his head, then gently nudged him with his knuckles more fully under the spray. When he stepped out--still completely dry except for his ankles, the angel was standing ladder-straight under the harsh water, face and hair dry and taking the full blast of the shower head in the center of his chest, which was swiftly reddening. Dean stepped carefully on the dewing tile and opened the bathroom door, taking the blast of dry, forced-air-hot air as a refreshing change from the tropical bathroom.

 

He strode over to his bag, picturing the color, shape, and location of the bottle of shampoo before he ripped back the zipper and dug a hand in—under his sweatshirt, on top of Cas’s scrubs from the hospital.

 

Manfully-unscented generic-brand shampoo-body-wash in hand, Dean squared his shoulders and walked back into the bathroom. Through the steam and the slightly-opaque curtain, he didn't see Castiel. Dean looked around the bathroom frantically, trying to see if he'd stashed the angel behind the toilet or under the sink. No dice.

 

He was about to call out when he saw a smudge of dark low at the end of a pale curve, near the edge of the tub and the covering of the curtain. He stomped forward and swung the curtain back, to find the angel hunched in on himself in a delicate ball, water pouring off his head and sluicing down his face. He didn't look up at Dean when he pulled back the curtain, now when the other man stepped into the tub. He kept his cheek pressed to his drawn-up knees and his eyes slowly blinking the water out of them.

 

Dean crouched down, setting the bottle on the narrow ledge behind him, space too small to avoid his knee brushing the other man.

 

"Hey, Cas, man, you ok?"

 

Nothing. Dean looked at him at the pattern of red the hot watering was bringing out in the other man's skin. Carefully reaching around him, keeping as out-of-contact as possible, he popped the pipe switch, turning the shower into a faucet-bath. He leaned a little farther in, entire side of his chest coming into contact with Castiel's outer arm, and flipped the silver switch down, closing the drain. Dean took stock of the limited sitting space and made a decision.

 

He stretched his left leg out, keeping the other pulled up, providing him some cover. Moving his hands into full view of the angel, he settled his finger-tips on the man's shoulders and pulled him gently away from his own knees. Castiel's shoulders were woody and knotted. As Dean pressed his palms into the angel's shoulders, a shudder ran through the man and he relaxed back, tipping and scooting as Dean settled him back first against his drawn-up knee and, then, when the angel kept writhing, trying to find a comfortable position against the bony appendage, against his chest. Dean moved his hand down to his friend's side, tucking him back tightly until their skins were flush against each other.

 

The angel's head was still bowed, his face still blank, his eyes now closed. Dean rubbed a hand up and down his friend's arm experimentally, then pulled away at the lack of reaction. Dean used the movement to lean forward to adjust the temperature of the ankle-height water a little higher--even motels' hot water tanks emptied eventually. Trailing a hand in the water as he leaned back up, he swerved it to avoid the angel's shin and hip. Dean cast around, unsure where to go next. As he leaned back to think, the bottle tipped against his shoulder. He reached blindly behind himself, grasping the bottle and slipping it cap open as he brought it around.

 

He poured a healthy portion into his hand and then, inspiration having struck, he spatted the whole mess onto Castiel's crown. The angel started at the sudden touch and texture, and raised his head to glance behind, the glance somewhere in the middle between a glare and a question. Dean ignored both, not meeting the angel's eyes, instead bringing both his palms up to the angel's hair.

 

He began by running his palm over the angel's head, slicking the white gel to his hairline on all four sides. Then he pressed his finger-tips into the densest portions of the shampoo and began rubbing it in. He slide the pads of his fingers up and down and around in slowly-widening concentric circles, not digging, just circling until the hair parted and he felt the scratch of barely-not-roots standing up against scalp. Once down at the roots, Dean moved in light spirals, rubbing at the scalp and brushing the hair back and away from the angel's face. When he reached his bangs, Dean ran his fingertips from the angel's temple to his brow, and then brushed up and back, pulling the slightly tangled bangs behind the angel's crown. He brushed the bangs back over and over again until they were in some semblance of order and lay flat on the other man's crown.

 

He tipped the angel's head back until it rested on his shoulder. This made it harder to get to the hair at the edge where his neck and skull met, but Dean compromised and used his thumbs to distribute the gel to the angel's roots. He shifted his shoulders back, giving himself enough space and leverage to press a little deeper, moving the tight muscles of the angel's neck until they loosened and gave. He moved his four fingertips back and forth from over the angel's hair above his ears, moving the last little bit of shampoo in that oft-neglected area.

 

The water was above Dean's waist now, so he stretched his foot out and twisted the water off. Then, pressing a cautionary hand to the angel's forehead, he lifted a palmful of water up and tipped it over his head. Only the smallest amount of soap left the angel's hair, but Dean did it again, and again, and again. By the time the water was getting filmily and cloudy, the angel's hair was clean, his chest pink from too long in the hot water. The angel had kept his head tipped back for the entire experience, only moving to settle more firmly into the curves and hollows of Dean's body.

 

Dean ducked his head down to bring his lips to the level of the angel's ear:

 

"Buddy, you ready to get out?"

 

The angel tipped his head into Dean's, pressing his damp and cooling temple to Dean's still dry hair. Head lolling, movement more a manipulation of gravity than an application of muscles, he nodded. Dean set him upright, slightly slanted into the wall of the shower-tub, and pulled his leg in to stand. He rose up, water leaving hints of bubbles on his smooth skin and smudges of soap residue. He twisted to reach the in-shower towel-rack, pulling a scratchy white scrap down. The angel was still sitting, weaving slightly. Dean bent at the waist and laid a hand on his neck. Castiel nodded, more firmly this time, and shifted his weight forward, standing in a surprisingly smooth motion for a body who'd been closer to liquid for the better part of 20 minutes.

 

Dean passed him the towel, which the angel wrapped ineffectually over his shoulders. Dean stepped out of the tub, sliding his damp feet over the floor-towel, decreasing the likelihood of trip-and-death. He rushed his towel over his mostly dry neck and then around his waist and up-and-down his legs.

 

Castiel stood still, staring into the middle distance and hands rolling the towel corners over his wrists over and over again. Dean reached under the counter for another spare towel and gestured the angel to step out of the still-undrained bath. Dean leaned down to flip the plug switch and before he rose up again began running his towel over the angel's legs and waist. He left his privates untouched and wet, figuring some things were best left to self-dry.

 

Convinced the angel wouldn't die of cold or spend a miserable night in damp sheets, Dean clamped a hand on the angel's elbow and guided him out of the room. Seeing two queen beds, Dean made enough decision. He guided Castiel to the most defensible bed--farthest from the door, nearest the window--folded back the sheets and set the angel down on the thin, white sheet.

 

He gestured him over and then flipped off the middle-wall-mounted-lamp. He circled around the bed, brushing it with his leg to tell the dimensions and avoid smacking into the wall, before pulling back the covers on the other side. He slid his legs in and rolled himself over onto his side, facing Cas. His eyes settled in clicks and starts, bringing different pieces of the room into focus in the new dark. He saw the angel was on his back, staring at the ceiling and unmoving beneath the half-covering covers. Dean reached over the angel, tugging the bedding up straight over his chest.

 

He slipped his fingers under the angel's shoulder and tried to turn him towards their shared middle. The angel wouldn't budge, and so Dean tried the other shoulder. Castiel moved easily to the other side, baring his back to Dean.

 

Taking a breath and hoping this intrusion wouldn't be the one to set his friend off, Dean scooted those last dozen inches over, pressing first his shoulders to the angel's, then the tops of his thighs to the back of Cas's, then his stomach to the other man's back, the finally nestling their hips together. Last, he placed his hand over the angel's belly, spanning the thumb at his belly-button to his pinky at the top of his pubic hair.

 

At this last motion, he froze, expecting a rebuke. But he received none, and Castiel settled his shoulders back into Dean's, hand and arm paralleling his and grabbing the outside of his palm. Dean eased his down-side hand in front of him, pressed his head into the pillow to confirm the gun was still there, and then focused on breathing in tandem with the angel.

 

Somewhere between detailing the shape of the angel's ribs under his forearm and counting the beats between the end of one of his breath's and the beginning of the next one, Dean's mind eased off its wakening track and--joining Castiel--fell into the ocean of sleep.


	17. Chapter 17

"Stop babying me, Dean!" Castiel stormed to the other end of their current motel room, but because it was roughly the size of a matchbox, he had to whirl around to face the stunned hunter before he'd taken 2 steps. They’d been moving around constantly these past few months, keeping on the move, keeping ahead of the avaricious Levis. Cas had been getting better, slowly, but better, though each move left him drained for a half-day. Castiel wafted forwards, looming over Dean where he sat, ruffled and with their shared sheets around his naked waist, still in the bed they'd been sharing until moments before. The angel leaned in close, and growled:

 

"I know what this is." He stood up, chin held high.

 

"This is pity."

 

At that, Dean threw off the covers, beginning his own storming.

 

"Pity? What's pity, Cas?" He had an inkling he knew where this was coming from, but wanted to avoid it for as long as possible.

 

Castiel saw right through him. "You are not insipid, no matter how often you pretend it to sooth Sam--though it never did and never will because he'd love you even if you drooled into your coffee--or pacify me, you are too smart for this, this," Castiel's eyes lit up, and Dean nearly groaned, "This _bullshit._ " Castiel looked absurdly proud of himself at the one swear-word. These, as with many things in his life as an earth-bound angel, were novelties to him. Much like what had ended them up in this mess.

 

Dean sighed, bringing his hand down over his eyes and scratching it along his day-old beard.

 

"I can't, Cas, I can't do anything until you're ready." Castiel's face morphed into a mask of sympathy before regaining it's self-righteous tenor: " _I_ decide, Dean, _I_ decide when I'm ready, not you."

 

"Ok Cas, but when was the last time you lost track? Hmm? You forgot who and when?"

 

Castiel shot back, "Two months ago." Dean ran a quick calculation and--actually, that sounded right. It had felt so much sooner as it loomed large in his memory. It wasn't often he felt afraid of his friend but this last time had been very very bad. His eyes had gone red, his voice reedy and shrill, and his touch ice cold.

 

Dean sank back, down into the mangled heap of white-and-gold comforters. He bowed his head, running through his internal checklist. Castiel let him do it, standing too far to touch with a strong breath, but in easy reaching distance if Dean lifted up his hand.

 

Was Cas himself? Check. Bitchy and entitled and wondrous and curious and brave.

 

Was Cas hurting? Not as much as he used to be: his baggage now seemed to weigh no more than Dean or Sam's own related Hell-baggage.

 

Was Cas capable of making and owning his own decisions? As much as he had ever been. It was nearly impossible to tell with the angel how important or unimportant human choices would affect him. He could kill with complete conviction, but ask him to skin a deer and he would go into a tizzy. More importantly:

 

Could Cas make choices about his body, and own them? Dean felt more comfortable answering "Yes" to this, though not as comfortable as he would have if Cas had never gone through the year. Castiel still lost control over his body when the memories became too much, or when a sensation breached his careful Grace/thought divide.

 

That tendency to get overwhelmed and blank out until he could process all of the feelings and sensations had been why Dean had, moments before, grasped Castiel's wrist tight when held it still against his stomach when the angel had started to drag the blunt tips of his fingers through the trail of hair below his belly button. It wasn't the first sensual touch Castiel had initiated, nor the first Dean had rebuffed, but it felt like they were at a tipping point.

 

Dean sighed, and hung his head lower. "Fine, Cas, c'mere and we'll talk about it."

 

"I don't want to talk about it," the angel said stiffly, but when Dean's hand shot out and grasped his wrist, tugging him down to sit, thigh pressed against thigh he sat down with a harumph.

 

The angel silently tipped his head against Dean, pressing his ear to the back of the hunter's shoulder as if he was listening for the truth of his feelings. _Damn_ , Dean thought. _I'm actually going to have to say this. Outloud_.

 

"So. Uh." Dean swallowed, the taste of hops in his throat, reminding how much better this conversation would go down with a beer, or twelve.

 

He squeezed his eyes shut, and as he felt his heart constrict: "So, you know I love you, right?"

 

Castiel nodded, not emphatic or shy, just curt and certain, like Dean had just confirmed the ratio of hydrogen to oxygen in water.

 

"And, uh, you . . ." Dean trailed off, raw and open.

 

Castiel spoke from Dean's shoulder, "I have known your soul for 3 years on earth and could have no other feeling than love for you, if I tried, which I do not wish to."

 

Dean nodded and cleared his throat again. "Well, when two people love each other," he heard his own voice saying the words and he stuttered to a stop. Castiel just kept sitting there, breathing and warm and tight against him.

 

"Aw, fuck." Dean turned into Castiel, getting his face between his hands and leaning their foreheads close together. "I miss the feel of you whole and like the touch of you and if you like that too, then that's good enough for me."

 

Castiel deliberately raised his hands and placed his palms over the backs of Dean's hands. "I do, Dean."

 

"Ok, well then," and Dean leaned forward, lips parting and neck aching for the back-and-forth of a kiss before something caught him up short. He pulled back, and he felt a tension in Castiel's arms, like the angel was stopping himself from bodily restraining the hunter.

 

"Uh, I guess, first, before we _do_ anything, we'll need to go over the basics." Castiel let out a frustrated huff, but Dean pulled his face back far enough to give the angel eye-contact.

 

"We'll go over it all once and never again, ok?"

 

"Fine, though I can assure you I am well-schooled in human reproduction."

 

"Theory isn't practice Cas, or they'd be called the same thing."

 

\--

 

 _Fuck. My. Life_. Dean Winchester thought, as he pulled up yet another diagram of a sexual position for a ferociously focused and intensely inquisitive Cas. They were still fucking dressed, still in their matchbox hotel room, still without the taste of each other in their mouths.

 

It turns out once you start teaching an angel about sex, he need to know about _all of it_. Even the parts not relevant to their relationship, gender, or, and Dean was looking forward to repressing that memory as quickly as he could, _species_. He never needed to know _that_ about ducks.

 

Crazy necrophilliac rapists, the lot of them.

 

Dean was running Cas through the ways a man on bottom could get off, hoping he could use his hands and descriptive skills rather than the disturbing props Cas had painstakingly made out of items around the space. There were two bananas, half an orange, a stack of toothpicks, a rolled newspaper with a rubber-band holding one end of it closed, and three pieces of paper folded into various pieces of furniture.

 

"Well, he can jack himself off," Dean started, ticking that one off his fingers. Castiel made a predictable motion around the barrel of Dean's carefully unloaded gun that made Dean half-cringe and half-harden.

 

"Yeah, like that, but more," and Dean reached over, wrapping his hand around Cas's and sliding his whole hand, pinky tight and the rest tender, up and down its length. He flicked his thumb over the barrel-nose, and then cupped the grip with a softly massaging palm.

 

"Ah," Cas said, in what Dean wished was any voice but one that reminded him of Sam discovering a new kind of beetle. Detached, interested, filing it away for later geekery.

 

"Or, he could rub one out against the sheets," and Cas carefully put the gun down on the table with a clink, and watched as Dean had a motion with it Dean hoped he would never have to make again. He'd always thought tops who left bottoms to fend for themselves were assholes, but he wanted to give Cas the full range, so that by God was what he was going to do.

 

"Or, and this is really the best way," Dean said, walking around behind Cas's chair and pulling him upright by his upper-arm, swooping around behind his back, holding him close and gesturing about a foot in front of where Cas's erect penis would be, if they were really doing this and not talking about it for what felt like hours.

 

"The best way," he murmured into the crease between Cas's crooked head and shoulder, "Is for the top to take care of the man he's making love to, in every way possible." A shudder passed through Cas, and then another, and another, and before Dean could get another breath in Castiel had whipped around, hands going up to his neck, yanking him down into a kiss. The angel was savage, invading Dean's mouth and pushing him backwards towards the bed.

 

He toppled Dean back, a knee between his thighs and an arm on his shoulder, controlling his fall. He kept their mouths in conversation the entire time, slick and wet and filthy-hot.

 

He had a hand under Dean's undershirt, zeroing in on a nipple, Dean's head thrown back and guard entirely shattered, tension snapping up from his gut, when Sam burst through the door.

 

\--

 

Cas was sitting on the bed, shoulders hunched and committed to not engaging until his erstwhile penis calmed down. It seemed the kick of adrenaline his body felt from hearing the doorframe splinter hadn't done a thing to reduce his tumescence.

 

Dean's face had frozen under his, his lips stiff and unmoving as soon the door opened. Cas froze a moment after Dean did, and moved back reluctantly at the palm on his chest. His chest felt raw without Dean pressed into it, and his dick, well, it was not on board with the current situation at all.

 

There had been some breakthrough around the Levis and Dean hadn’t been answering his phone and Sam was in the area. Though Sam had apologized and was shooting occasional awkward, apologetic glances Castiel's way, Dean was reluctantly engrossed.

 

There was a piece of information, some kind of tablet, that Sam needed Dean’s help getting. That meant Dean and Sam had to go _now_ before the Levis got it off the plane from Iran of all while Cas--Cas worked on his tented pants.

 

That wasn't what Dean said, obviously. Dean offered to bring him, though he knew how he felt about being anywhere near the Levis he’d housed within his body for so long. But Dean offered. Dean had something of the soldier's love of self-testing, of punishment for weakness, which Castiel had tolerated in the garrison. The running theory there was that any pain could be made weaker by making it deeper, by digging into it. No scar tissue, inner or outer, was allowed to form over uneven skin. Cuts had to be widened until the edges were even before they were allowed to heal.

 

One of the few things Castiel enjoyed about this plane of existence, aside from the brothers Winchester, was its comfort with messiness. If a man, or, say, angel, didn't have all of his shit together, if he was healing in fits and starts and was unable to handle the same input in the same ways on different days, it wasn't a failing: it was humanity.

 

But Dean still pushed, and it felt a little bit like home. Not in a good way.

 

With one longing glance behind him, Dean snicked the motel-room door shut and Castiel turned his gaze down to his pants.

 

His hand crept down, as drawn to himself as he had been to Dean.

 

It wasn't that he hadn't experienced this. The pleasures of the flesh as they were observable was included in the dossier for any soldier stationed on earth. And in the hospital, a hand on his own forehead or holding his own shoulder or resting idly between his two thighs had been a way to comfort himself, connect himself to this painful plane.

 

But masturbation to completion was a new potentially enlightening experience.

 

And so, with his pants tenting mightily, Castiel embarked.

 

He trailed his blunt-tipped fingers down his chest, and finding that sensation lacked the urgency of Dean on his chest, he swiftly slipped his button free and slid the zipper down.

 

 _Underwear_. He considered for a moment and then untucked himself from his white briefs, dingy-grey from color-blind launderers at the hospital.

 

He was long and slim, slightly flared at the head, circumcised. His hair was the same dark color as that on his arms and head, but wirier even than his leg hair. He trailed fingers around his base and found the skin there sensitive.

 

But nothing compared to the accidental thrill of brushing himself with the side of his hand as he went exploring.

 

He lifted his palm away from himself, considered the angle, and then thrust his hand down, grasping himself firmly as he'd seen Dean do countless times.

 

And _winced. Pain._ He snatched his hand away and did a little shimmy of discomfort. _Lots of pain_. Apparently either Dean's penis had protective callouses or Castiel had significantly overestimated the amount of force necessary to stimulate it. He leaned forward a bit, considering.

 

With a great deal more caution, he brought his hand down, grazing the back of his hand against the top of his penis. Still tender, but much better.

 

He started using the side of his hand, still keeping those gripping fingers loose and out of the way.

 

That's fine. Nothing like the nerve-deep rush of Dean's flesh against his flesh. Dean's mouth on his mouth--lips firm, tongue thick and slick, stubble scraping crosswise against his own--Dean's pecs pressed to his chest and the inside of his knee creeping up to hitch half over Dean's hip.

 

He dug into this memory-fantasy. He'd straddle Dean on the bed, wearing just his briefs and a commitment to end the night in orgasm (without his directing it, Cas's hand was now wrapped around his cock, undulating his fingers up and down its length as he imagined). He'd press him down with a kiss, so hard the pillow would dent and fold up a bit around Dean's ears.

 

Castiel like the look of that, Dean's senses dulled so he could focus on just touch and taste. Dean's eyes would be closed, his ears blocked by the buckled pillow, his body kept from taking too active a stance in activities.

 

(He slipped this other hand under himself, cupping and gently adding pressure to his balls.) Dean would writhe under him, pushing up and up, but a bit silent, only their harsh breaths betraying them. The silence of two soldiers more used to grunts of pain than pleasure.

 

Dean might arch up, and Castiel would take advantage of the movement to yank his shirt up over his torso, exposing the long, lean line of his stomach and that trail of hair he yearned to trace with his tongue (Castiel's hand was moving faster on his cock, whipping lightly up and down, while his other hand trailed over his own chest, tweaking a nipple).

 

Castiel would press his shoulder down, but, ah! (and Castiel felt the first tension of an orgasm coiling tighter within him), his hand would connect with the scar tissue he left on Dean's newly saved body. He would feel a jolt, (Cas was hunching over, fingers tight and savage on his left nipple, other hand twisting and cranking until he felt his legs begin to seize, but it wasn't enough).

 

"I'm yours," Dean in his mind moaned as Castiel pressed his palm into his shoulder, an admission like it was embarrassing, like it was true. "I'm yours, Cas."

 

And Cas was coming, cum looping over his hand and thigh and a bit on his shirt and chin and the floor. The orgasm waved through him, throwing his back into an arc and his head back in ecstasy. "I'm yours too, Dean," He whispered to the empty motel room air. After 3 or 30 more breaths to calm his thrumming heart, he looked down at his mess and then started to use the inside edge of his shirt to clean it all up.

 

When he was clean and zipped up, some edges of worry began to invade his mind. They were still shapeless but not harmless. He could feel the fear, the anxiety rising within himself. He could hear the tones of a tormentor's voice, could feel the brushes of knives over his skin. He took a deep breath and another one. Wrapping the air around his chest like a protective corset, he stood, stepped away from Dean's bed, holding himself so carefully, and sat down on his own.

 

He swung his legs up and around, and then laid back, above the comforters.

 

In the hospital, they had told him to use cardboard boxes and label them in his mind with worries. Another time, they'd said to use a card catalogue, and document the title, subject, author, and date of each of his immediate fears and concerns.

 

He used geology instead. He would start with a worry--that Lucifer would reappear in his mind--and assign it a rock-type: extrusive igneous. At first, Lucifer's invasion of his mind had been hot lava spewing onto the carefully layered surface of his mind, but since it had eaten him down and reshaped his mind, it had begun to cool and harden. That fear was present on the top of his mind at all times, and in some ways hid the depths he used to be able to access.

 

But there was a layer of near topsoil, because Castiel's mind was larger than a single lava plane, and fertile ground still lived in his protected mountains and river deltas. Eyes closed in concentration, he gently worked a river in his mind a bit closer to that basalt plateau. It was still hundreds of miles away, but eventually it would cover and begin working its way down into his black, scarred top layer.

 

He looked closer at the river. It had Dean's name on it. In traditional geology, water is a force that influences rock but is not a mineral itself (except when it is ice, when it is a crystal). He's supposed to move down a layer, perhaps to the aching limestone caverns which used to be full of the rock solidity of his heavenly home but whose insides had been sucked out to sea by God's pulling absence. But Dean's river seemed like a much kinder prospect, and if there was any lesson he struggled with and needed to practice, it was being kind to himself.


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ok, this deserves a special warning. Remember that Cas's PTSD isn't going to get better, and that sex doesn't solve things, and sometimes can make things worse.
> 
> I promise, *promise* that this has a happy ending. But it gets worse before it gets better.

Castiel awoke still above the covers and remembered yesterday, eyes and mind slowly adjusting to the differences between this hotel room and the past few dozen where he'd slept. He flipped through the sexual information he’d gotten, reminding himself of the particulars, forming each option into a flashcard for his memory banks. Then he thought about the feeling of Dean over him, behind him, his tongue in his mouth, his hand under his shirt, and he began to harden again.

 

But he didn’t do anything about it this time. He stood, stretching, letting the dawning sunlight warm his clothes. He took a shower, he went to his side of Dean’s duffle and pulled out a book. He read for the day, and the next, hand creeping between his thighs occasionally but mostly waiting.

 

He felt when they found the stone, and when they cracked it out of the mud. He felt the new prophet awake, and his terror. He kept to his reading and texted Dean to make sure he knew what was happening.

 

When Dean came back, he was lying on his back, eyes somewhere between squinting and closed--forehead taught and shoulders moving with his breaths. Dean nodded to Sam, who wisely turned around and headed to the motel office to get his own awkwardly tiny room for the night. Dean hovered in the doorway, shoulders aching from the fight and mind tight from the revelation of a new prophet. He looked at the angel. He knocked the road-dirt from his boots and straightened with a creak.

 

He knew he was stalling. He checked the lock on the door and pressed his sore and tired hand to the frame before turning around and marching to Castiel's side.

 

"You ok, man?" He said.

 

"Hmm?" the angel said sleepily.

 

A knot in the back of Dean's spine unraveled at that; he didn't sound like he'd been fending off a breakdown for days, more like he'd gotten bored and begun to nap. Dean glanced at the clock: it was 3am, long past when the angel usually conked out on those nights he could sleep.

 

He stood over the angel, staring down at him for a few moments more before reaching a decision. He clicked off the light, shucked his pants and overshirt onto the floor between their beds, and sat down on the bed. He then tipped himself forwards, onto his knees before the angel's bed.

 

He could see his eyes glittering at him in the dim motel parking lot light, considering him. He raised his hand to his friend's cheek and pulled the side of it down to rest on his neck.

 

"You just want to go to sleep?"

 

"No." Castiel responded.

 

Dean didn't feel a corresponding thrill of arousal; he felt tired.

 

"I can't believe I'm saying this, but can we rain-check this? I'm freaking exhausted. I'll grab you in the morning?" He threw as much of a leer into that last phrase as he could manage, but he feared it just came out awkward.

 

Castiel's hand snaked up, trapped the back of his neck and pulled him into a sharp, closed-mouth kiss.

 

"Yes." he said.

 

"Tomorrow."

 

Castiel rolled himself into Dean’s arms when they lay down next to each other, not negotiation or prevaricating or pretending to need less than he did. He just nudged Dean’s arm with his head until Dean straightened it under his neck, and then fluffed the pillow until it gave him enough support he wasn’t losing air or blood flow from the location of Dean’s arm. Then bracing himself off of the place where their skin met, he wiggled his way backwards, locking his ass into the curve of Dean’s hips, pressing his warm back to Dean’s warmer chest. He sighed and he slept.

 

\--

 

The next morning didn’t start off with sex, though both of the men thought about it. They both followed their usual routines, with showers and shaving and reading, a quick trip to the grocery store to make-up for the supplies Cas had run down to the spares on. It wasn’t until mid-morning that Castiel made his move.

 

Dean had grinned at him when he came out of the shower, but Castile had felt a burst of embarrassment and had swiftly dressed and made an excuse to go for a walk. Dean took the time alone to think, to think about shyness and boundaries and what Cas might need to make this experience his own, their own. Dean thought about how unsure he still was of what this might do to and for Cas, and decided letting Cas set every piece of the pace was best.

 

That’s why Dean didn't look up when he felt the bed dip at his feet, nor when he felt a broad palm on his bare ankle. When that palm lifted and slim fingers trailed down the side of his foot before curling over and caressing his arch, all he did was glance up.

 

Castiel's head was down, gaze intent on his own fingers. He trailed them up and down, up and down. Perhaps checking if Dean was ticklish? He wasn't, but Dean expected the need Castiel was expressing was far less childish and far more normal. He watched him duck his head further and graze his knuckles over Dean's anklebone. At Castiel's quick glance up, Dean looked down at his book again, but his concentration was broken.

 

"You need something, Cas?" he said, in his best put-on lazy voice.

 

"Hmm?" the angel said in reply, really giving him no mind.

 

"Let me know if you need some audience participation, otherwise I'm going to be up here, reading."

 

Dean knew he couldn't ignore the shoots of feeling he was starting to get from his extremities, and expected them to be even more distracting the farther up his less their source got. But this was for Cas, and he could play along.

 

"Hmm." The angel replied, before pressing a single knee down into the bed between Dean's legs, sliding it forwards until it rested in the V between Dean's two legs. The angel quickly ran his hands up the inside of Dean's calves and the hunter slid his legs farther apart, still pretending bored indifference for all his worth.

 

Dean clutched the bottom of the ratty paperback harder when the next sensation he felt was Castiel's entire _face_ pressing into his stomach. Nose down, buried in his loose t-shirt and relaxed muscles into his tardy cheekbones. Dean could feel the pressure and click of Castiel's nose and knew it couldn't have been comfortable to be so pressed in, but felt it as Castiel pushed himself up the bed, resting his shoulders on Dean's spread thighs. The angel took a deep breath through Dean's t-shirt, then turned his face and let it out. He moaned in his own mind even as he kept his face entirely still.

 

The angel moved his head forward, scraping his 5-o-clock shadow over the hunter's shirt, rising it up until Dean could feel air moving over the skin between his pelvic bones and his belly button. The angel kept moving his face forward, switching sides to rub--like a cat scent-marking its territory. Dean gasped at this image, of being kept, of being held, of being _his_ , but when Castiel glanced up his eyes were firmly on his book.

 

Leaving his shoulders on Dean's thighs, Castiel eased his hands up, digging his fingertips under Dean's thighs, riding up behind his ass, to the smooth curve of his lower back and, catching the t-shirt in the groove between his thumb and forefinger, then the bumps of his ribs. Castiel laid the side of his face on Dean's newly exposed stomach, pressing gently in so Dean did not feel the scrape of his beard but only a tender prickling. He squeezed his book tighter until the paper creaked in his fingertips, and he still let Cas get started without a lot of reaction from him.

 

Cas turned his face down into Dean's stomach, burying his face again but this time with kisses, pressing them wet and languid against the hunter's skin, working his way up, balanced between his one knee and his two hands and his face, until his lips were pressing Dean's shirt higher and higher and higher. At Dean's diaphragm the angel brought his fingers back into the game, slipping one under the remaining folds of Dean's shirt to encase a nipple, not squeezing but brushing, gentle as breathing.

 

Dean hadn't moved on a sentence in all the minutes since Cas had begun his slow journey up his body. Dean forced himself to turn the page, letting Castiel focus on acting, not reacting.

 

But Dean full-on threw the book across the room when Castiel darted up and pressed his lips to Dean's nipple. As Castiel applied incredible pressure, Dean arced up off the bed, a guttural groan lifting itself from his throat. He screamed in frustration in his head, _Cas wasn't doing enough_ , but he kept silent, bottling all of the rest of the menagerie of noises that threatened to escape the cages of his mind. When he could roll his eyes down out from under his eyelids, he saw Castiel was smiling an utterly nerdy and delicious smile: pure accomplishment.

 

Dean's breathing was getting faster and faster, but it was Castiel's turn to ignore his reactions. The angel moved down his chest, easing his thumbs under the hem of Dean’s pants, brushing the top of his briefs but not the flesh straining within them. He bunched Dean's soft shirt even higher, bunching it up under his armpits and keep his hand, hover, but not closing, over a pec.

 

His face was slowly moving south, but in a maddeningly indirect path. First he was under Dean's left rib, then below his belly button, then licking a deep stripe into the thin skin of his solar-plexus and then wedging his tongue under Dean's jeans. Dean's head was creeping further and further back on the pillow, ecstasy pushing his tendons tight against his neck and curling his fingers deep into his palms.

 

Dean rode the feeling, trying to get on top of it, get on top of the wild love he was feeling, this openness to anything Castiel wanted to do to, wanted from him. He felt like he could give his soul to the man on top of him and never miss it because there was no way they could ever be apart again.

 

He dove back into his body's sensations when Castiel clicked open his fly button. A thrum of cold rankled up his spine and he pulled himself out of his arduous coma to ask:

 

"Cas, you sure, we haven't talked about exactly what you want to do this first time--"

 

"Hmm." Castiel mumbled against his thighs. Dean glanced down and nearly lost his resolve. Castiel was bent down, stretched out, arms above his head and palms at Dean's side, running thin and thinner and sweltering hot strips up and down the skin just to the sides of Dean's pecs, while his face was buried in the crook between Dean's thigh and his groin, face down and nose buries deep.

 

But Dean persevered.

 

"Cas, we were going to aaahhhhh" Castiel had placed his open, exhaling mouth on Dean's dick. Dean was no longer responsible for his actions; but he was. He was, _dammit_ , so he tried again.

 

"We need to--huuuuuuughn--Cas, we just need to--aaaaaaahhhh," the angel was running his tongue over the top of Dean's cock through the gap in his pants and his stomach skin. But he really needed to get this said, so, every muscle aching, he laid his flat palm against the top of Castiel's head and pressed him upright, raising a thoroughly pissed-and-blissed-out looking angel face in the process.

 

He tucked one of his palms under the angel's armpit and yanked him up higher, so the angel collapsed with a huff on Dean's chest, laid out full length. Dean ran a soothing hand down the angel's shoulder and spine, pulling his shirt down and then up in the process. He used the other to press the angel's tousled hair into his shoulder, where the angel settled with a frustrated sigh.

 

"Cas, man, you know how much I want this," he pressed his thickening cock up against the angel's waist in proof, "but I want you whole more, and I need to know we're on the same page for this. Let's go over the list."

 

Castiel's sigh was even less impressed now, but he tried.

 

"Where am I?" He recited, using a truly obnoxious sing-song voice. "I'm here, on top of Dean Winchester, not inside him as I intended to be only minutes ago, and getting more sexually frustrated by the second."

 

Dean nodded, waiting for him to continue.

 

"I am me, Castiel," he paused, about to say something, then he rushed on, "Castiel Winchester, Angel of the Lord, former God-surrogate, current repentant." Dean flinched at this last one, but his mind caught permanently on the "Winchester." He resisted the urge to yank the angel's head up by the hair, demand of him what he thought he meant by that, what they meant they were--but he let him continue with the litany.

 

"I am in this bed of my own free will and of no others. It has been two-hundred and fifty-five days since I have seen Lucifer and I do not expect to see him no more." Castiel said these last two words as a little song. That's what Dean got for trying to teach him culture, playing him old gospel tapes.

 

"And?" Dean asked, hand still smoothing the angel's hair down from his crown.

 

"And I am without debt to you or anyone else." Castiel raised his thoroughly petulant head, "Now, can we have sexual intercourse?"

 

Dean rolled over on top of him, switching their positions with the skill of a man long-used to having sex in tight quarters. "Sure, baby, yes,"

 

And dove in for a free kiss.

 

Cas's hands were on fire, running up Dean's sides and over and over his hips. He'd just been on him, had him nearly in him, but he was oddly hesitant to reach the few inches forward and grasp Dean's still hard cock. Dean was making the most guttural sounds, savoring every plunging kiss and tight space between their bodies. Cas shoved a hand up and under Dean's shirt and then the sound Dean made--a nearly hurt whine, desperate and pleading.

 

No.

 

Oh, no.

 

Oh, sweet God, _please_ \--

 

Castiel's body was no longer his own. The heat, the trapped space between Dean's arms and beneath him had been comforting, riding that thin line Castiel lived on between too-mellow to feel and stuck in a tortured loop of memories.

 

But that sound, that whine of greedy appreciation, of desperate need.

 

That had been the sound the dogs had made before Lucifer set them on him/Sam/him. That had been the sound they'd made as they'd lapped his blood, torn out chunks of his flesh and tossed the goblets between each other, snarling and whining.

 

To Dean's credit, though Castiel would expect nothing else, the instant his body snapped rigid Dean was off him, kneeling on the side of the bed, giving Cas air, giving him room. Cas didn't need room--he needed these memories to leave him the fuck alone, stop fucking up his small-and-faltering attempts at a love life.

 

The convulsions took him entirely, leaving nothing of his mind or body in control of his actions. Through pain-slitted eyes he caught glimpses of Dean's tortured face. When one throw tossed him nearly off the bed, Dean caught him in his arms, folding him back together and laying him back on the bed. But instead of being to enjoy his strong arms around his torso, he fought him, fought the hunter, writhed and despairing agony as the memory of other hands holding him _down_ squeezed his mind.

 

Dean was terrified. Cas had been getting better, so much better. He'd been trying and trying and working and Dean had seen improvement. They didn't need their nightly Bible reading or even the list. He'd asked him for show, for final confirmation they were out of the woods.

 

Castiel's head snapped back, grazing the headboard as Dean crouched over, trying to rearrange his pillows as the seizure took him wilder and deeper into his mind.

 

That seemed to have been the last major throw. Castiel's body was subsiding, wracking itself slower and smaller with those deep tremors coming less and less often.

 

There were tear streaks down his face and he was silently wording, mouthing something. With a sickening feeling in the pit of his stomach, Dean recognized the words:

 

"No."

 

"Stop."

 

"Please."

 

But there was one, over and over and over which it took him a moment to catch.

 

"Dean."

 

Dean felt like a bucket of cold water had been dumped on his head, running down his chest, freezing his heart and lungs. He cleared his throat and put his hand to the side of Cas's damp and fevered face.

 

"Cas." He said, slowly and calmly like they'd practiced.

 

"Cas." He repeated. He knew it could be moments or hours before Cas could come back to him. But it always started with the litany.

 

"Cas: where are you?" Castiel's eyes sought him out blindly, searching and searching, not able to find him.

 

"You know," he rasped, voice a scrap of the beautiful thing it had been when he'd asked for sex.

 

"Cas, I need you to answer."

 

"I am in Hell."

 

Dean stumbled back. Never, not since they'd started together, never had Cas answered that way. He'd grumbled about the ritual, joked on occasion. But he'd never been so far in he couldn't see light.

 

"I'm in Hell and you put me here, Dean Winchester."

 

Castiel turned to his side, back away from Dean, as Dean backed away from him. Cas's body was still trembling in tune to his internal infernal drums, as Dean backed-up until he felt the knob poke him in his back pocket. He zippered and buttoned up and then threw himself out the door. He gasped the air as he ran, sound of Cas's broken voice trailing behind him.

 

_You put me here, Dean Winchester._

 

\--

 

Dean was crouched, back against the wall, when Cas found him 42 minutes later. The hunter was still breathing harshly, his jacket zipped askew, ass on the hard, cold pavement. It had taken 7 terrible minutes for his hard-on to subside, and he'd never hated his own dick more.

 

If only he'd waited. If only he'd listened, there must have been some smidge, some clue that Cas wasn't doing ok. He should have guessed. He should have _known_.

 

Cas stood over him, staring down, and Dean kept his gaze level, eyes open and vacant looking across the dirty parking lot. His mind was carefully, painstakingly blank.

 

Castiel crouched down in front of him, and turned around and hunched against the wall, the inches between them so desperate and deliberate.

 

He kept glancing over, but Dean was too--fraught? guilty? hurt? hurting? scared? lonely?--to respond properly. Finally Castiel tipped himself into Dean's side, the impact hard and confusing after so much distance, and Dean jolted, getting his arm out of the way and around the angel before he could crush it with his hip.

 

"That was very unpleasant." Castiel said, under his breath but still clear.

 

Dean nodded, jerkily.

 

"I believe it had to do with confined spaces." Dean nodded again, and started trying to list kinds of sex that didn't involve getting close enough for one person to be a little confined at some points. _That's was part of the fun, sometimes. Being so close you have to get closer if you want to move_. _When sex was between two people who didn't fly into PTSD fits at the lack of space_.

 

"Maybe in a field," Castiel said. "In lightly skimming my memories, I see nothing happening in a field which could throw me back into that space. Other than being unmade by Lucifer, but that memory is my own and not likely to interfere with my sexual progress."

 

Dean must have tuned in at the wrong time--Cas couldn't possibly be talking about having sex again? After what had just happened? Dean was seriously considering a life of celibacy.

 

"What, Cas? You, you want to try again?"

 

Castiel looked at him strangely.

 

"Yes, Dean," he said slowly, "That was unpleasant, but my physical feelings for you remain, as does my curiosity. I just need to configure the appropriate setting."

 

Dean huffed, _he_ wasn't sure he wanted to ever have sex again after what had just happened, but he kept his misgivings to himself. If Cas wanted to drive, he'd let him.

 

Castiel's hand crept up his back, to nest in the hair on the back of his head. He pulled his ear towards him and said,

 

"It is quite cold. Can we return to the room now?" Dean froze for a moment, and then unfolded himself upwards, ignoring the persistent complaints of his too-stiff body. He stood with his arms at his sides, still numb from the fear and the cold, when he felt Castiel's warm arms wrap around him. He heard him whisper in his ear:

 

"You never sent me to Hell, Dean. I know that. I went the first time to rescue you, and though the winds of fire burned my wings black as ash, I dove and caught you and rose. All of my memories, my true memories, of Hell are full of your soul's bright light. Everything else," Castiel cleared his throat, "everything else is pale metaphor. It is just occasionally captivating metaphor." Dean nodded, and let Castiel guide him back to the room.

 

In his self-directed tirade during those terrible 42 minutes, Dean had confirmed with himself that they would sleep in separate beds that night. Cas and Dean sat on their opposite beds, staring at each other. The space between them never seemed so large. Dean remembered leaping between beds in motel rooms when he was small enough for John not to freak. The push of the springs against his feet and the lightness when he caught air and the unpredictable bounce when he landed.

 

There'd been a 6 month hiatus of the bed bouncing game after Sam gashed his  forehead open on the corner of a night stand and John went ballistic. Dean's hide had been sore for weeks.

 

Dean looked across the space at Cas and grimaced.

 

"I'm tucking in,"

 

Castiel nodded, eyes a bit glazed. He leaned over and hunched up at the top of the bed, getting his feet under the covers and then sliding his whole body in. He turned to face Dean. Dean was still seated, but he stood, turned around, pulled the sheets down and, still leaning over, froze. He could hear Cas breathing slow and a little exerted getting under the covers and then easing down into meditative breathing.

 

Dean stepped back once, and then another, until his shins bumped into Castiel's bed. He sat, and without looking back put his hand out behind him, wrapping his hand around Cas's upper arm.

 

He ducked his head, and when Castiel moved he got ready to stand up, to explain his need away. But Castiel curled in around him, knees to his side, arm snaking around his waist.

 

Castiel's head was tucked into a pillow, but Dean could hear him clear as bells.

 

"I'll keep trying, Dean. We just have to keep trying." Dean turned swiftly and planted himself in Cas's arms, trying the whole time to give him space to breath and run and get away.

 

Dean's head was at his shoulder, when he said: "There's nothing you need to do but what you're doing. We'll get this, whatever this is."

 

\--

 

Castiel slept uneasily that night, the reverberations of his waking nightmare still needling him beneath the skin. He woke up in a cold sweat, dangerously chilled and sure he was freezing Dean to death. The hunter slept. Another hour later, he woke up, mouth dry and skin burning, convinced he was surrounded by fire and Dean was burning with him. The hunter slept on.

 

For a quarter of an hour, Castiel stared at their shared ceiling, and then rolled out from under Dean's arm and padded over to the window sill. He perched on its edge and looked through the whisky curtain into the dark parking lot. He didn't see anything--no headlights, no open doors across the way, just an empty row of headlights and front seats.

 

He tried to sort his memories into their appropriate boxes, talking to himself quietly about how each made him feel. He stuffed an entire sequence into the "These make me feel tortured" box, and a slim few from the moments Dean was pressing him down into the comforter but before his memories had risen to drown him, into the box marked "Love-making."

 

Castiel didn't have a compass to judge their sex time by, but he knew it was unacceptable for one partner to flee while another partner laid in the throws of his delirium. He knew why Dean did it; he had no real resentment towards the hunter. But that he fled, that this time he reacted differently than he ever had before, worried Cas. If Cas could, he would pull himself back into the way he'd been before, before he'd been raised again by God, before he'd run heaven, before he'd taken on Sam's damage.

 

He would. He tried. But he couldn't. He had his shaken-up board game of a mind and only Dean's patience to rely on. If his faith in Dean's loyalty was anything short of the rock-bed of his recovery, he might feel pressure to conform to Dean's needs to ensure he still had the protection he so desperately needed.

 

But he did not doubt Dean. He did not wish to or plan to do anything but try to become as whole a self as he could make himself.

 

\--

 

Castiel waited until sleep weighted his arms down, and then he returned to lay parallel to but not touching Dean. He was afraid he would wake him up if he tucked in as closely as he yearned to. He lay on his side on the too-narrow bed, but his lower arm was uncomfortable. He gingerly scooched to his back, but found his legs twitching. He tried turning on his other side but felt so utterly abandoned with his back to Dean's back that he flipped back over.

 

A thrill of panic which had been anchored in his too-tense wrists flung itself up his arms. Now he couldn't even _cuddle_ right. He started flipping through all of the things he did wrong--couldn't have sex, could barely masturbate without injuring himself, scared and hurt his partner when he got overwhelmed. He wallowed in the feelings and then started one of the exercises:

 

One.

 

Two.

 

Three.

 

Thirty seconds of feeling shitty. Sixty. DONE. He whited out his mind, filled it with buzzing bee noise, clenched his fists and his thighs and his back and his neck. He created enough stimulation he had to focus on something other than the litany of ugly that had been streaming out of the carefully tended cesspools of his mind.

 

And he started, carefully and cleanly, pulling good thoughts out of their boxes and looking at them.

 

  * He was getting quite good at gun repair.
  * He made Dean laugh yesterday with his impersonation of the internal thoughts of the truck driver they were slowly maneuvering around.
  * He had made Dean's head fly back in ecstasy when he'd run his hand down his shirt and into his pants.
  * He had yet to meet a cat who did not like him.
  * He could read all of the languages of earth and angels and demons.
  * He was getting better.



 

He fell into that last thought (he was getting better) and let that wrap him to sleep.


	19. Chapter 19

Castiel awoke to a pressure on his body. It wasn't Dean's body, he could hear him in the bathroom, it was all over his body and bone deep. It pressed him into the foreign mattress, the fifth new one in a new motel room this week, made the comforter both too too heavy to shift and too light to provide any warmth. He tucked his arms under his chest and then cross his legs, twisting his neck to keep breathing while he adjusted himself on his stomach.

 

The weight was particularly heavy on his shoulders, and when Dean returned, he found he couldn't shift them. Dean sat on the bed, pulling the covers over Castiel's body. Castiel pressed his head into the pillow, light over his shoulder suddenly too bright and Dean's eyes too prying.

 

The darkness was cooler and easier to take, but with it came waves of guilt. Why didn't he want to get up? Why didn't he walk to talk to Dean? What _more_ was wrong with him? He dragged himself up on his forearms and shoved his hips around until he was sitting. But his knees drew themselves up to his chest, his head was so weighty he let it rest for just a moment on his knees.

 

Dean's hand was hot, too close, too scratchy when it came to rest on his back and he flinched away, then ached with its absence. He felt the litany of self-hate rising. He couldn't even bear to be patted on the back? How could Dean want to be with him in any way if he couldn't bear to be touched?

 

He buried his head again, and when he felt the weight of the bed lift up the voices got louder, shouting at his cowardice, his weakness, his failure to heal. He let them roll him under. He didn't have sidewalls to keep them back, didn't have counterarguments. He just felt too bad.

 

When Dean returned with the smell of donuts, Castiel forced himself to look up, to smile, to grind his way through the ash and dust in his mouth and to eat what Dean gave him. He sent his mind somewhere else while he went robot and filled his bag, emptied his pockets of fluff and trash, and slouched to the Impala.

 

Dean had known something was wrong the moment he got back from his shower. Cas had been limp and unaware and now, now Cas was grey. Not his skin--still his usual pale. Not his eyes--still their drowning deep (Dean winced at the mushiness of that description, but it was the most accurate). Not his lips--still a bit dry but plump as ever. But his _aspect_ was grey.

 

He didn't smile at Dean's joke about the motel sign they'd passed--"'Mermaid Inn' Indiana? The closest thing they have to liquid-breathing humanoids are college girls in Champaign"--and he didn't make eye-contact when Dean started staring at him through the rear-view mirror rather than looking at the, albeit boring, road. He didn't answer when he asked where he wanted to eat, until he repeated himself three times.

 

Then was the worst part. Cas dragged his eyes back from where they'd been like he was hauling in a thousand-foot anchor, before tipping his head a tiny fraction and then shaking his head even more slightly.

 

 _Where's "I'm the one that gripped you tight"? Where's "I'd rather be here"? Where's Cas's_ _flare_ , Dean wondered, then scolded himself. If Cas couldn't be as bitchy, as dedicated, it was Dean's job to deal.

 

That afternoon was worse. Every time Dean changed the music Cas winced. It wasn't until he popped in one of his oldest, most worn-out tapes that Cas seemed to relax, though every volume change brought on the twitching again.

 

They made it to the hotel for the night and Castiel sat in the car, not following Dean's lead in getting out, not even leaving when Dean opened the back door and gestured for him. He merely shrugged himself deeper into his trench coat and kept his thousand-yard stare going full-blast. After Dean got the keys, he hiked back out to where he'd parked in the back of the lot, and opened the door, showing the keys to Cas.

 

Then Cas got out, took the keys, marched straight into the room, shucked off his shoes, untucked the covers, tucked himself into bed with his back to him, and shut everything else out. Dean sat in his chair, and stared at Cas's still back for a long time.

 

\--

 

When Dean woke up, Castiel was fully dressed and sitting on the edge of his bed, staring at the door. Dean started up, trying to hear the danger that had caught the angel's attention, but there was nothing. No scuff of monster feet or snick of the burglar's lock pick. Just the distant rush of the highway across the parking lot from their room and the tetchy tweets of the morning birds.

 

Cas's shoulders were tight and his hands clenched into fists. Dean stood, briefs riding down over one hip and walked into the angel's line of sight. He continued to stare through Dean's belly to the door opposite.

 

Dean knelt, lumpy and grimy motel carpet making indentations in his knees. He put his hands over Cas's fists and leaned between his knees.

 

Cas's face lowered towards him brushing his forehead against Dean's. Dean lifted his hand up to cup the back of Castiel's neck, pulling him in closer. Dean rose up on his knees, balancing his elbows on Cas's thighs and pulling his head to his shoulder. The angel's breath started coming audibly, then harshly, then sobbing.

 

Dean kept a grip on the angel's neck while winding his other arm around his torso. When Cas's pushed out huffs started coming with sounds, Dean's heart started cracking. He levered himself up, laying the angel back and then on his side, twining their legs, wrapping him up and giving him space to leave.

 

Cas pulled his fists into his chest, each sob wracking him. When Dean trailed a tight hand down Cas's back, he released the tension in his arms and threw them around Dean's body, burying his face impossibly deeper in the hunter's chest. Dean felt each sob pull out a piece of his chest. His neck was tight with the need to hunt, to fight. His fists clenched behind Cas's back.

 

But he kept his body soft, he kept it open. He bore the weight of his friend's misery, and let him hide in the spaces in his body.

 

He kept his hands to himself, not stroking, not holding too tightly, not closing around him. Easy and escapable. Each sob was now punctuated with a word.

 

"I" harsh breath, " _hate_ " harsh breath, "not" almost a hiccup, "knowing" breath through his teeth, "where" a quake of his entire body, "I" another shudder "will" and another sob, "wake" and a shaking head in Dean's chest " _up._ "

 

Dean felt an ice-water bath pour down his shoulders. He rocked and thought and rocked and thought, hand trailing with stiff fingers and up and down his friend’s back. Up and down, pressing in tight.

 


	20. Chapter 20

The next morning Dean pulled up Craigslist and clicked through to the housing section. He guess he could scam $500 a month hustling pool for a few months, and looked in that range. Nothing in the nearby cities, nothing in their suburbs that he wanted to try. He tried to do this without thinking of what life would be like in a house, in an apartment.

 

He tried to think of dishes, the kind he'd washed with Lisa not the kind he'd eaten off of and thrown away for 30 years on the road. He tried to think of carpets he'd have to vacuum, lawns he'd have to learn to mow. Part of him tingled at the challenge of it, the potential to learn and master new skills.

 

Other parts cringed and hid. His routine was his, his trunk all the storage space his life needed. He fit his life and he'd grown and trimmed it to fit. Sam used to raz him for wearing John's jacket, said he was copying his Dad.

 

But Sam didn't know about the second lock-pick pocket he'd sewn into the right arm seam, or the garrote he'd threaded through the cuff. He didn't know that he tucked his hands into the pockets so it wouldn't swing away from his thinner body when he walked and after years, it hung in that shape in the rare moments he let it rest on hangers.

 

The jacket had a scrape down the shoulder Dean had rubbed and rubbed with oil and finally a smudge of dye. That he'd restitched the other shoulder after he yanked it open after a slow-motion fall from a date's motorcycle, and the thread was dark blue rather than it's original caramel.

 

He didn't know he'd made his father's jacket fit him. And he no more wanted to give up the jacket than the life he'd made.

 

But he looked over at the man sleeping on the other bed, normally scowly face more crunched than usual. He thought of the feeling of him wracking in his arms, then of him peaceful and calm. He dove into that last feeling and thought, just for the moment before it fled, he could fashion another life, for him.

 

\--

 

Castiel woke up in a better place than he’d been when he’d exhausted himself in Dean’s arms. His cheeks were stiff with dried tears, neck aching from where he’d clenched his muscles to keep his sounds small and quiet. His palms had half-moon indentations where his fingernails had pressed in and kept pressed in while he slept. His knees itched with the creases of his suit pants.

 

He tipped himself onto his side, knowing Dean was watching every move. He pointed his toes and raised his arms above his head, pushing all his tension to his extremities and visualizing it shooting out of his finger and toes, leaving him less blue and black and more white and beige.

 

He rolled his shoulders back, trying to press his human wing bones together behind his back, and felt his breastbone crack with the pressure. Dean jerked at the sound, face tight and eyes a little too bright. Castiel tried a smile on; it shouldn’t be too difficult to pull it up and out and together this morning.

 

But then he caught sight of it: the side-table lamp. It was a rotator-switch, not a flip switch. He’d seen hundreds of these in the hundreds of motel rooms he’d watched the Winchesters recuperate in, and he’d used a few dozen different models. But every single one of them required different force, a different grip, and different twist to the wrist.

 

He didn’t know, if he rotated it on, what light it would put out. Bluish from a weird bulb, the old-fashioned yellow, the current fad of bright white light? He didn’t know what sound it would make. Humming from a loose connector or a cranking sound when he twisted the knob or silence?

 

The thousands of directions it could go in pulled him apart, his seams straining under the knowledge that nothing was reliably the same.

 

He hunched his shoulders back into himself, and curled over into Dean’s body.

 

Just a few more minutes and he knew he could get up.

 

\--

 

Dean called Sam at a rest stop:  
  
“There’s something wrong with Cas.” Sam didn’t even think to snark, to point out that all of them were damaged and “wrong” was a pretty relative metric in their cases. But he knew Dean wouldn’t have called him if it wasn’t urgent, so he hushes and listened.

 

“He’s regressing, and I, fuck man, I don’t know what to do,”

 

Sam put down the file he was reading in the Levi’s office building and began tapping a chat to his very-nice-for-a-possessed-human secretary asking her to clear his schedule for the week.

 

“Where are you? I’ll come and see what I can do.”  
  
Dean didn’t even try and dissuade him, just gave him their intended location that night.

 

Sam grinned to himself as he loaded his briefcase into the back of the Impala. One of his first achievements after wiping himself and Dean out of the Levis database was wiping any information about the existence of the Impala as well.

 

Come what may with Cas, Sam knew having his baby back could help Dean.

 

\--

 

Dean heard the rumble of his baby from half-a-mile of rural road away, and his heart started to beat. He got up, gently disengaging a sleeping Cas from his chest, and jogged outside. The bear-hug he gave Sam was tighter and longer than even his baby’s return warranted, but Sam hugged him back.

 

They walked together to the front office to get Sam a room, and Dean spilled out his problems and projects and Sam nodded and listened. They parted at his door and Sam clapped him on the shoulder, telling him to take it easy and they would figure things out in the morning.

 

Dean had lifted the keys to his baby, and spent the next hour transferring everything of theirs from their piece-of-crap loaner into his longest-living home. He sat in the driver’s seat for longer than he intended, just breathing in the space, knowing Castiel was waiting for him, but just needing this. Just this.

 

\--

 

Castiel got up and Dean coaxed and prodded him into fresher clothes, herding him from a few feet away until he settled into the back of the Impala. Cas’s face had lightened when he saw the car, and Dean pulled out of the parking lot without a single look back at their former ride. Cas was silent in the front seat, Sam chatting with Dean in the back. Dean was settled into listening to the same mixtape for the entire trip. They watched Cas in bits and pieces, but his face was so grey, Dean couldn’t, and watched the road instead.

 

They were stopping for gas, Sam waving Dean to take care of the tank while he and Cas went into the convenience store for a snack-refill. Sam came out thoughtful, but said nothing until they got to that night’s motel, Cas sitting in the car while Sam and Dean went through the glass doors to handle the reservation. Before they were about to exit, keys in hand, Sam pull on Dean’s shoulder, stopping him right before he exited the office.

 

"Dean, it’s the moving."

 

"What? What’s the moving?"

 

"Dean, look at Cas." Dean peered through the grimy glass of the motel office window. He saw his baby with, the angel in the front seat--but he couldn't see all of him, he could just see his mop of hair, getting lower and lower and lower in the window. He saw slim hands come up to cover that his face, and then move around to cover his ears. The angel rocked into his hands, then rocked again, entire body a contortion of misery.

 

"He'll be fine once we tuck in for the night."

 

"It’s the moving that’s killing him, Dean. He doesn't do well changing contexts after what he’s been through. He needs to know what he can ignore and what he has to pay attention to, and he can't figure that out without something regular in his life." Sam paused, and then said lower,

 

"He didn't grow up in this life, Dean. Until he met us, met you," his brother shot him a look, "His entire life was following orders, watching the same mountain peak for a single prophet to come down. _He's not like us_."

 

Dean knew the truth of it, but a life like that? Things imagined while holding a miserable man didn’t seem as necessary in the light of day. A life without the wheels under his feet and the road rolling on below him. Who was he if he wasn't a driver?

 

After Cas fell asleep in his arms that night, stiff and shaking and taciturn, he thought through what Sam had said.

 

He let rise in his mind those times when he had been so tired of living on the road. When he’d craved a place to put and always see that picture of his mother, his favorite gun.

 

Dean Winchester had at various times in his life craved stability. And for hours and months, he had occasionally achieved it. Living with Lisa, the odd collection of months strung together at one high school when their Dad got an extended-stay with separate bedrooms for each of them.

 

Eyes and body entirely on automatic, he tried to fill his mind with the basics of that feeling, that yearning to be tied down. As hard as he pushed himself to remember those moments with Lisa, his mind kept drifting back to those rare moments with Castiel would wrap his arms around him and Dean just felt—safe, warm, quiet, home. There was a stability in allowing himself to be held, to be comforted. He knew it was ephemeral and that Cas was and might always need to be the cared-for one. But he also appreciated the chance to feel protected himself.

 

He tried to push that vision into a future. Would they own a house? A dog? A _cat_? Would Dean be able to hunt? What if Cas got better enough to get over Dean. The loyalist part of Dean’s brain tried to deny access to this thought, but between Dean and the open road, he’d rather think it and then think it done.

 

What he could see clearly was Cas’s face when he was happy. That claw-mark of a line between his eyebrows, that scrunched cheek and chin. Castiel felt best when he was relaxed, after a shower, lying on his back on Dean’s lap in the back of the Impala. He combined those feelings of home and worth and protection with that smile and it clicked. That was a future he could work for.

 

\--

 

The next morning Dean roused them out of bed early enough the song-birds accompanied their tooth-brushing and the dawn was barely peaking when they passed their first major mile marker.

 

Dean was settled into the driver's seat, Sam tapping irregularly on the window, and Cas catching Zzzs in the back. He had tossed in his sleep, pulling Dean out of his post-contemplation light dozes, but hunching away from his comforting hands and arms. He’d awoken cold in the morning, the heater off and his angel standing, staring fully dressed out the door at the car, waiting.

 

Dean drove for a few hours before curving into a diner standing alone in a big parking-lot full of Mac-truck sized parking spaces. He glanced over at Sam and then back at Cas, who was still sleeping. He harumphed and climbed out of the car, waiting to see if he got a reaction. None forthcoming, he slipped inside.

 

Dean hated getting diner food to go, but it was worse sitting at that long formica table and eating his greasy meal alone. So he packed it up in boxes--two burgers for Cas and him, one box full of the three vegetable sides the diner offered--and headed back to the car.

 

Cas was no longer in the back seat, and Sam wasn’t in the car.

 

Dean was never sure when, if ever, his heart would stop panicking when he lost track of people he loved. He glanced hurriedly and then with terror, around the emptying parking lot. He saw nothing but jewel-toned big rigs until--there, over by some trees in that copse--a splash of beige trench coat. His eyes made out the lean, gangly form of Sam, standing over--was Cas kneeling or fallen?

 

The tubs of food hit the ground as Dean took off at a dead run, careening between cabs of trucks, mind blissfully blank except for the image, no, the sense-memory of his arms around Cas's thin frame and his ruffled hair peaking over his shoulder.

 

Dean arrived and skidded to a stop on the asphalt, neither sure whether he should be drawing his gun, nor convinced in what he was seeing. It was Cas kneeling and, it looked like, praying, while Sam stood to the side with his arms folded and his eyes locked on the angel.

 

Dean felt a stillness trap him inside himself. He crunched a stick under his foot and felt something in the air break. Cas was aware of him, but stayed back to him, kneeling, face uplifted and brilliantly sunlit. There was something, some tension or heft to the air around them. It didn't feel malevolent, nor particularly friendly, but enwrapping and whole and a bit alien. Like a dusk mist but thick with light.

 

Dean's knees had a curious interest in kneeling beside Cas but he held them back and stood, ramrod straight, staring at the angel.

 

It was the smallest and kindest he'd seen the angel in, well, in the time since after they tried to have sex. He seemed a man, but also full of shimmer in a way that stabbed Dean, made him fear the angel was dematerializing, turning into a golden shower (Dean shoved the obnoxious Zeus-stories that internal description threw up in his internal card catalogue). He breathed in that mist-light, trying to discern its intent. He felt nothing, well, nothing but that untargeted interest and kindness. He wondered if it was God.

 

It had been minutes since Dean had pounded asphalt to get here. He threw a meaningful and questioning look Sam's way and Sam gave him an impassive stare back. No help from that quarter. So Dean decided to balls-out it:

 

"Hey, Cas, buddy?" No reaction. "We got to get going. You going to be done here anytime soon?"

 

Still nothing. Dean waited, hoping Cas would come out of his trance and hear him. He felt strangely reluctant to stride through that drifting light towards the angel. But he did, because it had Cas inside of it. He strode through, and bent to drop a firm grip on the angel's shoulder.

 

As soon as his touch landed, Cas gasped audibly and intensely. "What, where, where is he?" He stuttered.

 

"Who?" Dean said, unsteadily trying to pull the angel to his feet.

 

"God." Cas was speaking fast, high, panicked. "God, he was just here." Dean wondered if he should feel apprehensive or pitying or awed. Mostly he felt hungry and concerned for Cas.

 

"I didn't see him, Cas. You ok?" Cas turned slowly, still kneeing and look at Dean with wide, lonesome eyes.

 

"He's left me. Again." He said, voice utterly flat.

 

That's enough. "Up and at 'em," Dean said as he bodily dead lifted the slightly limp angel. "He left you with us because we're the right place for you to be. You should hang out with us." Sam gave him a significant look over Castiel's head and the three of them started walking back to the Impala.


	21. Chapter 21

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is the happy chapter! They finally get to have sex!

Dean drove past 3 motels, but he knew he had to keep going. There was something niggling in the back of his head, and he knew if he just kept driving he'd get it out. It was in Sam's voice but had Cas's face. It had to do with a certain kind of motel, but he couldn't for the life of him remember what kind. Finally, just before the state border with Wisconsin but far enough from the Twin Cities not to feel suburbia-y, he slowed down and rounded a curved driveway into an extended stay motel, more like monthly-rent apartments.

 

The sign promised a kitchen and a fridge, and there was a market just across the road. When he exited the car, he didn't make any form of eye-contact with Sam or Cas, but circled around to the back, levering the trunk open and pulling out one of their extra, huge, duffels. He started emptying the trunk, pulling anything and everything out and layering it in the bag. The two other men stood, watching him, in silence and a little awe (Sam may not have seen the back of the Impala empty when it was in use in his lifetime).

 

Dean kept his head down. Somewhere, deep inside, he knew he would jinx it. If he said anything, _did_ anything, to indicate how big a moment this was, it would all come crumbling down around him. So he watched his own hands zip up the zippers, watched his scuffed boots walk up the cracked sidewalk and over the tacky astro-turf-covered patio, and his hands hand over the one credit card with his real name on it, unused except for a yearly bottle of Jack which he poured out the window on a long midnight road around the day John died.

 

"One month, please." The teller squinted at him, but Dean kept his eyes down.

 

"Alright, it's nonrefundable, so's you know." Dean nodded, eyes still locked onto the discolored formica of the barrier-desk. "I'll need a suit, 2 bedrooms."

 

The guy gave him a long look, with a particular stare over his left shoulder, where he knew Cas was owl-facing hard-and-long. He said nothing about the kinds of beds to be found in the suites, but silently slid the two key-fobs over.

 

For the first time in years, Dean walked away from someone and, if Sammy had asked, he wouldn't have been able to describe him. It was a tiny twig of the forest of paranoia which his father had cultivated in his heart, but he tried to leave it behind, along with his credit limit, on that crummy desk. Throughout the encounter he had been violently aware of Cas and Sam's awkward, hot presences at his back. He ignored them, slinging his duffle over his shoulder and lunging around the corner to the ground-floor rooms they'd snagged.

 

"Dean?" Sam asked, and maybe Dean was just grateful it was him asking rather than Cas.

 

"What's going on?"

 

Dean threw a significant look at Cas.

 

"I just figure we need to sit still for a while. There's more than enough to do in this part of the state, I think," his eyes kept sliding towards Cas, though he wanted more than anything to leave the angel in the dark about his intentions, "I think it would be good."

 

Cas's eyes had been unfocused for the past few moments. He had these hours, and at bad times these days, where he just wasn't there. Where he took himself away. Maybe the hallucinations were particularly bad, maybe the world was just too confusing. Those times and their proportion of his life had shrunk and shrunk since they'd left the hospital, but he was still lost in the world sometimes. Now he snapped back in, face cocked and blue eyes piercing.

 

He surveyed the room, turning tiny step by tiny step, taking in the lamp and the carpet and the threadbare couch. With a sharp glance towards Cas Sam nodded slowly and then faster. He glanced between the two doors on either side of the living room, the doors to the two different bedrooms.

 

"Alright," he said, and ducked into the smaller of the two, snicking the white door shut. Dean and Cas were left alone in the living room, staring at each other without making eye-contact. Castiel continued his survey, stepping forwards to run his knuckles down the ribbed wallpaper, scratching his nails along it.

 

He dropped to his knee, trench-coat billowing at the suddenness of the movement, and ran his hand back and forth, making patterns in the beige carpet. He stood and walked to the window, and spent long minutes looking at every source of light and natural sound in the parkling-lot, rolling the curtain between his fingers the entire time. He turned and walked to the couch, sitting on each cushion, putting his legs up here and then there. He approached the TV with a cocked head, wiping dust away from its slightly curved screen. He peaked behind the TV case to see where the wires went to touch the walls.

 

He looked up at the ceiling, eyes scanning methodically, tile by tile. He was wandering towards Dean, still staring at the ceiling tiles, when Dean said:

 

"Alright.” He headed into the other bedroom, Castiel trailing after. He dumped his bag onto the bed and started pulling Castiel's clothes out and piling them into the dresser, willy-nilly. Castiel stopped in the doorway, gaze running over the bed, the side table, the identical wallpaper, the now familiar carpet and ceiling tiles, the brand of the lamp. He was unloaded the socks'n'underwear when he caught a glimpse of Castiel's rigidly-still form, standing back-up into the corner of the room.

 

"Hey, Cas, this is ok, right?" he said to the bedspread. When he heard not a word, saw no movement out of the corner of his eye, he turned around to see the angel's eyes alive and awake, his aching misery falling off of him in waves.

 

"This can be home?"

 

"Yeah, Cas, sort of a pre-home. If we need to stay here for a while, we can. We can also start looking for another place, a quieter, a loner place." Dean took a breath do deep it stretched his ribs painfully, "If that's what you want."

 

He tensed his shoulders and Cas’ impact was shocking and immediate. Dean had a moment where he struggled: fight back, protect himself from the fall, try to land on top. Dean fell back with the angel collapsing with him on the thickly-box-springed bed, one thigh between his. The angel was moving on top of him, face happier than he’d seen in weeks, and it took him a moment to realize he was trying to open Dean's shirt and pants at the same time.

 

"Hey, hey, no need for that, we can celebrate without sex," Dean tried, firmly widening the firebreak between the forest first of his arousal at Cas’s sudden closeness—after so, so long—and the peaceful homes of his commitment to get Cas whole.

 

"Nope; wrong, Dean Winchester. There is no celebration without sex. Sex now." Castiel's hands were around his own tie, yanking and tugging it off.

 

"Cas, Cas, wait--" Cas growled, utterly uninterested.

 

"Cas, no, stop." Dean said, raising his hands and putting them between them.

 

"We can do it fast, but we need to do it." Castiel cocked his head at him, hands stilling.

 

"Where am I?" He recited, voice flat and deep. "I'm here in our 'temporary home' with Dean Winchester, with whom I am hoping to make love in the near future."

 

Dean kept his hands between them, but nodded that he'd heard.

 

"I am me, Castiel Winchester, Angel of the Lord."

 

"I am in this bed of my own free will and of no others. It has been two-hundred and seventy-five days since I have seen Lucifer," and at Dean's raised eyebrow, "And twenty days since my last relapse into memories of Sam's torture."

 

Dean nodded and went in for a kiss, but was brought up short by Cas's raised palm on his chest.

 

"I am without debt to you or anyone else." Castiel's eyes were serious. "I am doing this of my own free will, Dean." He pressed a kiss to his forehead. “I want to.”

 

Dean grinned, mind finally freed, and pulled him down for a kiss, keeping his grip on the angel's neck firm and sliding his hand down and _in_ to caress his straining cock.

 

"And now you have me, what do you want to do with me?" He asked, full grin warping his face into lines younger than Cas had seen on him in months.

 

"Hmm," Cas murmured into his lips. "I'd like to spread you out underneath me and take you apart at the seams, see how you really tick, Dean Winchester."

 

Dean sucked a breath in, Cas's growl reaching into his limbic system and demanding an audience. He cupped his hand around the angel's cock and began stroking it, tugging up and smoothing down, before Cas batted his hand away.

 

"No." Dean felt cold at the word and started to fling himself away, as he always did when he heard that word, but tried to stay tuned in to hear the next part, "No, this is not about me, this is about you tonight. Me, getting to have you." Dean couldn't argue with that, and scooted himself back, so he was reclining on fluffy pillows and wearing a smug smile.

 

"Alright, have at me."

 

Cas's grin echoed Dean's, with a feral edge. His angel swept a leg over him, pining both his thighs to the bed before pausing, hands hovering, moving to nearly touch his shoulder, then his hip, then his face. Cas was glancing from one to the other, face tense. Dean reached up, keeping his palm facing out and his face clear. He rested it on the angel's cheek, and Cas tucked his head into it, hiding his expression in Dean's hand.

 

Dean smoothed Cas's hair behind his ear before dropping his hand down, trailing along Cas's arm to find his hovering hand, before covering it with his, and entangling their fingers. Cas smiled, and bent in for a kiss.

 

It was softer than he expected, lips working against his, pressure enough to keep contact, but light enough that every time Castiel pulled back, he had to lean in to keep the contact.

 

And, Oh God, did he want to keep contact. His skin was stretched tight and felt red and warm, his ears were humming with it and he felt a static, a tense energy in the air, just building and building until he knew he was due for a shock.

 

He pushed forward, wanting more out of Castiel’s mouth, but Castiel kept pulling back and back, rocking back onto his heels, then sitting back in the middle of the bed, Dean following on all fours. Castiel had a finger under his chin and was guiding him in and up, until they were kneeling, thighs pressed around thighs, hands hanging loosing, chests pressed with not a millimeter of space between them. Castiel used the finger to keep him back when he pulled away one last time and Dean didn’t want to push past that small barrier.

 

“Back,” Castiel said, “Lie back.”

 

Dean nearly cracked his head on the headboard diving backwards onto the pillows, legs wide and heels catching behind Cas’s taught thighs to pull him in and down. But Castiel resisted, only contact a trailing finger or two, doodling on Dean’s thigh.

 

“I’m going to put every piece of you in my mouth, Dean Winchester. Whether you come or not is your business, but I am going to taste all of you before the night is over.”

 

Cas’s voice was low, strong, sure, and Dean stilled a little at it. He looked closely, and it didn’t seem like Cas was clinging hard, was faking it. He seemed to be comfortable enough to ask for, fuck, _demand_ , what he wanted.

 

But Dean pulled away a little in his mind. He didn’t want this to be all about him, he wanted it to be more even.

 

Cas could feel it and pulled back with his body, face a mass of confusion.

 

“That’s, that’s not the only way we need to, Dean, what do you want?” His voice halted and started and stopped and Dean’s ached with the loss of his previous force.

 

“This is good, I just, do we, can we just be equals? For this time? I don’t give orders, you don’t take orders?” Dean swallowed, “I just want us to know we’re equals.”

 

Castiel nodded, a little too quickly, a little too firmly, and Dean cringed inside—he hadn’t meant to correct the angel away from following his own path. He sighed but kept it off his face. Dean raised a hand and trailed it down the angel’s face. He leaned in, a whisper and a half away from his reaching mouth and said:

 

“I plan to lay you down too, under me, around me, in me, but we have lives and lives for that. Just for tonight, we’ll split everything equally. Ok?”

 

“Yes.” And Cas was on him, in his mouth, hands everywhere and nowhere for nearly long enough. He pushed and pulled, lining up their bodies and cocks for a few rough strokes and then changing positions, straddling Dean, close but never enough pressure, enough _friction_.

 

Dean nearly whined with it, but held himself back. He started murmuring instead, nonsense, well-meant, ill-put nonsense.

 

“You’re, Cas, you’re so _good_. I just, I need your mouth on me,” Dean was muffled for a moment as Castiel indulged this request breathing his words for him,

 

“I need you too, Dean.”

 

“It’s not just the sex, though,” as Castiel trailed a hand down his bunched stomach muscles and pressed a palm to his crotch, “that _is_ good,” he breathed out.

 

“Tell me what you like about this, Dean, I need to hear it.” Castiel’s voice was a whisper, a promise as he trailed his lips over Dean’s shoulder and down his arm. He was paying careful attention to the dip between Dean’s triceps and biceps, using his fingers on the left and his lips on the right. He moved down in careful parallel to Dean’s elbow as Dean stifled a moan.

 

“I like,” he started, and his breath caught hard when Castiel pulsed a closed-mouth kiss into the thin skin of his inner-wrist. “I like that you think there’s something special, here, on me, in my skin.” He closed his eyes, he felt so dumb.

 

But he kept going: “I like,” he tipped his head back against the wall, “I like that you’re confident and enjoying yourself,” and his hand snuck up, under Castiel’s shirt, trailed his finger-tips over his cock as it strained through his briefs.

 

“And I like this, you, getting ready to let go with me, whole and healed.”

 

“Not all the way healed,” Castiel said, clinical voice incongruous with his body hunching closer to Dean, trying to give room for his hand trailing over his briefs and still get close enough to catch Dean’s breaths in his mouth.

 

“I have the dreams, and the ticks, and I cannot use my powers or even,” and he stilled and Dean pulled his hand back, ready to stop if needs be, “or even fly, Dean, I can’t fly.” He stopped breathing, holding for a long moment. “But,” and his smile was sharp, rough and new and real, “I can have this. And I _like_ this. I choose this, Dean, I choose you.”

 

Dean pushed back against him, hand digging all the way down, cupping and caressing and holding him in as Castiel kissed him until Dean could no more think than breath.

 

Castiel laid Dean back, untangling their arms and moving them to a simpler configuration: Castiel on his knees between Dean’s thighs, Dean’s legs around Cas’s waist, Cas’s hands balanced for a moment on Dean’s chest, Dean’s hands hooking under Cas’s arms, holding on tight and tighter to his shoulders.

 

Castiel pressed his hand downwards, brushing his fingers through the thickening hair as he trailed lower and lower. His palm brushed the head of Dean’s cock and Dean couldn’t-didn’t-wouldn’t suppress a gasp. He wrapped his entire palm around his, rubbing the side of his smallest finger against Dean’s ball sack and sliding his hand lightly up. Dean’s head pressed back into the pillow, _their pillow_ , as Castiel dove down to taste the skin of his neck.

 

He tucked his hand behind the hunter’s head, fingers playing lightly in the short hairs on the back of his neck. He followed his fingers with his lips, whispering,

 

“I choose you, Dean Winchester.”

 

With that, Dean dropped his hand from Cas’s shoulder and slid it between them, holding his friend’s cock in his palm before stroking it, running his fingers up and down. With his leg, he pressed down and in, until Castiel got the idea and lowered his hips with a rush, their cocks coming into such sudden and unexpected alignment both men cried out, bucking for a few overpowered moments with not a shred of finesse between them.

 

Then, fingers lacing and precum from Cas’s full dick providing a bir of slide, they began sliding their hands down. At the bottom of the pull, Castiel jerked his hips forward into their hands and Dean followed him. They continued, Dean half-a-beat behind Castiel, until Dean lifted his hand up and trailed it down the angel’s face. Castiel’s head tilted inwards, seeking the concave comfort of the palm, and with his deep breath at the contact, they started breathing together.

 

Suddenly, everything was in sync. In-breath, they both pulled back, hands slipping against each other but maintaining contact. Out-breath, they both thrust, Dean feeling Castiel’s abdominal muscles bunching against the back of his hand, and Castiel watching as Dean’s body curved up, taking his hips entirely off the bed. They thrust and pulled, thrust and pulled, gaining speed and trading friction for delicious wetness.

 

They were racing, pulling each other in perfect tandem, to the finish line, but Dean needed something, a small push. One last moment. They pushed and pushed and pushed and then Castiel collapsed his head on Dean’s shoulder, catching his breath. Dean still didn’t feel his partner’s release on his hand and belly, his own hips still twitching up. Castiel pressed down on his shoulder, hand fitting into his old handprint and began a slow, harsh drag of cocks, pressing himself deep into the V of Dean’s thighs.

 

They picked up the rhythm again, pressure intense between their bodies and their breathing coming faster and faster. Dean pushed his hips up, jerking with the end of every thrust when Castiel caught his chin in his hand, pulling his eyes to his own, and said, voice breaking with the strain of their combined effort:  
  
“Dean Winchester, I love you.”  
  
And Dean lost it, thrusting wildly, with abandon, head flailing from side to side, hand gripped under Castiel’s arm for balance and connection and containment, as Castiel rode him down and in, Dean saying breathlessly,

 

“Me too, Cas, I love you too,”

 

And Castiel was lost, pushing one last long slow glide and gushing warm-wet onto Dean’s hot mess. He collapsed those last few inches onto Dean’s stomach, body entirely slack, hand on his shoulder twitching and trembling nearly as quivveringly as his softening cock. The angel tucked his head into the hunter’s shoulder and breathed deep into his belly, filling the space between them both with a perfect circuit of skin. Dean breathed deep next, keeping the contact and keeping the line of their skin pressed ankle to shoulder along their entire bodies.

 

They lay there, shaking and losing time for moments and minutes before Dean’s upstairs brain rose to the surface and asked: “Can you reach your shirt?”


	22. Chapter 22

 

Sam had left a few days later, letting them settle into a steadier flow of Dean looking for work in the different places they might want to live, Cas thinking about and researching what kind of location-stable life he’d like.

 

It was slow going, though the addition of sex to their lives made both of them happier men. Dean was having to think through what he wanted in non-hunting, paying work. There wasn’t much work in this part of the country, much less work for Castiel, who was still pulling his pieces together.

 

Sam had told him before he left that he thought they were less than a month away from a solution. With enough notice, the angels had hidden the prophet and deciphered the tablet. With his connections, Sam thought they’d be able to take care of Dick Roman once-and-for-all, with no need for Dean or Cas to get involved.

 

This morning, Dean asked Cas to drive with him, but wouldn’t tell him where.

 

"Where are we going, Dean?" Castiel asked. He was hunched between the wall of the car and edge of the seat, shoulders up and voice rough.

 

It had been a tough night and Castiel peered out at the morning light in the little town they were driving through with narrowed eyes. Dean sighed and counted to fifteen.

 

"I want you to take a look at something." He said. Castiel huffed and settled against the wall, staring out the passenger window. Dean checked the address on his hand again, then took a left.

 

He pulled up in front of a little house, faded yellow walls with white trim. He knew from the Craigslist ad it was a two bedroom, one bathroom, 1,500 square foot place with another 2,000 square feet of backyard. The appliances were new, and the last tenant had died in such a manner that most of the carpeting had been ripped out and replaced with hardwood.

 

Dean knew where he was buried, and if this worked, he knew his first stop after he got his keys was to go to the cemetery and salt-and-burn the poor demon-girlfriended-bastard.

 

Dean realized Castiel was staring at him. He rewound his hearing, but the angel hadn't said anything. His eyes held the question though.

 

Dean saw another car pull up, a red Maserati and he got out, leaving the door open so Castiel could hear them speaking. He walked over to the woman getting out, her stunningly purple suit not dimmed by her dimpled smile.

 

"Mr Smith?" She said.

 

"And you're with Foster Realty, Jill? I'm Dean and that over there," pointing to Cas, who was head-tilting at them through the windshield, "Is Cas." He took a deep breath. "I mentioned over the phone, but he's my partner." He looked at her hard, but her smile didn't droop a millimeter.

 

"Great! You ready to go in?" Dean smiled for the first time that day, and nodded.

 

"One sec, let me get him. He," Dean tried to think of an appropriate lie, one that would save Cas the trouble of getting judged by this stranger, "He came back from the war a little different, but he's a good guy." 

 

Jill nodded once and headed for the door, pulling the keys out of her overstuffed purse. Dean walked over to the car and leaned in.

 

"I know I should have told you, but I wasn't sure it was what I wanted. But I want you to see."

 

Castiel's eyes softed. "You made an appointment with a realtor for us alone, but now you're ready to include me?"

 

"It wasn't like that, Cas. I always wanted to include you, but I just wanted to get a little further in the process before I got your hopes up. I haven't told Sammy either," Though Dean had every expectation his brother would be thrilled to have a permanent base of operations, even if it was in Wisconsin.

 

Castiel looked at him a long moment, and then he shifted, clicking his seatbelt out and pushing the door open, standing and shaking his shoulders to get his coat to settle more easily.

 

"Then what are we waiting for? Let's see what you've found." And marched across the street to the narrow paved walkway leading to the dark brown door.

 

Dean followed, heart jumping in his chest and hands clenching. This was the best he could find in the area. He'd seen this realty company on a previous job, and after some searching he'd realized they specialized in selling places tainted by violent death. He'd done more than research the property; he'd gone to the leasing office, sat down with the owner and talked over a business proposition.

 

He could would take care of any ghosts she found or feared would come, handling any bad spots or unnatural occurrences and in exchange she would give him and Cas a break on the price--taking this place into the range Dean thought he could actually afford if he scraped by.

 

Dean hurried to catch up to his angel. Cas was staring at the marigolds planted beside the front-walk, but keeping up a good pace. Dean reached the sidewalk in time to watch Castiel exchange a few words with Jill. Dean watches carefully for her back to stiffen, her eyes to widen, but she just smiled wide and waved him into the dim interior. Dean jogged down the walkway to catch up to them, and walks in as Castiel asks.

 

“The previous owners, they died violently?”

 

Jill’s smile got a little fixed at that, but she replied, explaining in vague words what Dean knew from his conversation with her boss, and now he was guessing Castiel was picking up from the air in the house.

 

Castiel looked around, but for the angel that meant tipping his head back all the way and craning it all the way around. Jill stood watching them, hands easy on her clipboard, purple purse tucked behind her elbow.

 

When Castiel returned his gaze to her, she said, gesturing with her hand opposite her purse:

 

“There’s oak parquet here and in the hallway on the way to the bedrooms. The living room-dining room has off-white carpeting and the kitchen is terracotta tile.”

 

Dean’s head whipped around at Cas’s next question:  
  
“Is the terracotta tile sealed or unsealed?”

 

Jill’s eyes got sharper and she answered easily,  
  
“Sealed. Wouldn’t want spills to become part of the flooring.” With a bright smile she walked them into the kitchen, pointing out the deep cabinets as well as enduring grease stains on the ceiling. She ushered them out the back door to look out over the field and batch of trees they might call their own if they got the place. She was turning to move them back in when Castiel started wandering towards the far fence.

 

With a quick glance at Jill, Dean followed afterwards. He caught up with the angel in the middle of the grass, where he was standing with his head and shoulders all the way back. His eyes were closed but his face was open. Dean took his elbow and tucked himself into the angel’s side.

 

“What do you see, Cas?” he asked. The light was getting golder and warmer than the season normally would. There was a light mist rising.

 

“God is here. We should live here.”

 

\--

 

But they couldn’t just go with one without looking at others for comparison, and Castiel took his nesting seriously.

 

“What about this one, Cas?” Dean said, pointing to the apartment pictures on the screen. Castiel turned his head, back against the fluffy hotel pillows and shoulders higher and back tight.

 

“It has the high ceilings we both agreed were necessarily for a happy coexistence,” Castiel said. “But,” he continued, Dean’s expression growing more tense and worried by the second, “The walls are brown, which would never fit the high-in-the-tree-tops motif we’re working on,” Castiel said.

 

“Alright,” Dean said, clicking over to another tab, “How about this row house? It’s got an income basement, a small kitchen and a short walk to the train that brings you to the library.”  
  
Castiel nodded, fingers hovering over the keyboard. His fingertips flicked and he pulled up another listing. They swept through one after another, popping some into tabs and leaving others unclicked entirely. He pulled up another site, one which mapped every rental option for 15 miles on either side of a zip code. Dean’s eyes settled into a steady rhythm, hand creeping to the angel’s thigh, and then his wrist.

 

He moved it up slowly, keeping a steady pressure on his forearm until he reached his bicep, where he lingered for a moment on the perfect indentation where his thumb fit.

 

The angel bowed his head and said: “Dean, if you don’t cease distracting me I won’t be able to find us a two-bedroom in our price range.” Dean huffed and pulled his hand away, but scooted himself lower. His head was aching, drooping with sleep and his bones felt too big for his muscles to hold up.

 

He kept up what he thought were a convincing pattern of “Hmm”s and “Uh huh”s but when he felt the angel reach over him to set the laptop on the bedspread and then found himself enveloped in an angelic octopus hug—complete with thrown-over leg, clutching arms, and chin-anchor—he knew he was caught. Castiel hummed happily and kept his hold on Dean tight as he greyed out to sleep.

 

\--

 

After other checks and other afternoons spent searching, Dean and Castiel settled on the little yellow house. They kept the deal with the realtor and she offered 6 more jobs for Dean in the next month, and then a retainer that would cover most of their mortgage if those went well for both of them. After a smooth inspection, the two men hoisted their one-duffle-each and walked into their house.


	23. Chapter 23

Castiel was smiling. Actually fucking smiling. He was bent over under the hood of the Impala, changing the oil like Dean had taught him during a particularly boring stake-out for the realtor, and he was smiling. He had headphones in his ears, having stolen Dean's mp3 player. Dean had the dark suspicion he was listening to choral music, _religious_ choral music rather than the occasionally awesome use of choirs in real music.

 

Dean turned back around swiftly, twitching their came-with-the-house-yellow curtains back to normal as soon as he saw Cas shifting his weight to come inside.

 

He stared down at the newspaper, circled red wanted ads staring back at him like demon eyes. Cas had stared at him when he'd dropped the dollar in change at the corner store for the _Whatever-it's-called Herald_ but Dean knew jobs for high school drop-outs in a small town were less likely to be on Craigslist than in the local newspaper, so red-inking it was.

 

He could be a bus-boy, though his back twinged at the prospect. He could be a dishwasher at the bar, but the thought of touching Cas with hands reeking of industrial detergent made him shudder. He could paint houses or sell knives door-to-door or watch toddlers scream and cry and sleep.

 

He sighed, folding and then slapping the paper on the coffee table--Goodwill, covered in well-loved scratches before they brought it in the door.

 

Castiel walked in through the front door, wiping grease on his jeans. Dean calculated the cost of the two runs of laundry to get those stains out--unlike the other Winchesters, Cas actually cared about looking presentable in public. He was volunteering at the public library, working on his people-skills and pacing up and down the small aisles, putting books in their rightful places.

 

Dean stared at the newspaper again, and picked it up just as Cas walked back into the living room, still smiling.

 

\--

 

He lowered himself on the couch. Sometimes Cas walks like his clothes are held together with pins and if he moves too quickly he'll get stuck. Other times, he's all loose and liquid--like now, when he leaned over to touch his shoulder to Dean's and then flop onto his lap, tucking his ear into the curve of Dean's hip.

 

He laid there, breathing and settling down into the cushions and Dean's body. Dean kept rustling through the pages of the paper, but the warmer his legs got from Cas's body the less focused his eyes got.

 

Cas hummed and scooted his shoulders up, so he was laying on Dean's lap and looking up at him. Dean stopped shuffling and laid the paper down on the floor. He settled in hands on his lap, except Cas was in his lap, so he settled his hands on Cas, one stroking through his hair and the other resting on his chest. He leaned down, planning to kiss him, but then got sidetracked and buried his nose in the other man's shoulder, breathing his scent in.

 

Dean smiled, the thin line of tension that had been growing in his shoulders unraveling. Cas turned his head, buying his head in Dean's hair and Dean could feel him smiling. Without lifting his head, Dean said:

 

"You have a good time?"

 

Cas nodded, careful not to head-butt Dean.

 

"What'd you learn?"

 

"Engines are hot after you run them," and Castiel held up a hand, Dean just now seeing a red-stripe across his palm.

 

"Cas!" He said, shoving the angel up, "You've got to run those under hot water or they'll blister." He herded him to the kitchen, holding his one hurt hand in both of his, and yanked on the cold faucet. But when he ran it under, the hurt was gone.

 

Cas smiled: “I hadn’t shown you yet, because I was still unsure if it would be consistent, but I think I can heal myself again safely.”  
  
Dean shifted until he could wrap his entire body around Castiel’s, hiding his emotion-wrought face in the angel’s shoulder.

 

“That is so good, Cas. I am so proud of you. That is so fucking good.”  
  
They stood in silence, Cas smelling like the Impala and Dean gripping him, his mind nothing but a constant cycle of _Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you_.

 

\--

 

It was before dawn and Dean was sitting in the front seat of the Impala, alone. Dean saw Castiel twitch aside the living room curtain before coming outside quickly, then slowing until he meandered to Dean's door on the drivers' side of the Impala. He stared at the angel's waist as it filled his window, and then the angel's face as he leaned down to peer at Dean.

 

Castiel tapped on the window, and instead of rolling it down Dean cautiously opened the door, and gestured the angel in. He swung his legs out, and Castiel took a seat on his knees, perching and twisting to look Dean in the face.

 

"Where are you going, Dean?" The angel asked, voice careful, without accusation.

 

"I just need to drive, Cas. I'll be back." Castiel quirked his head, and continued as if he hadn't heard.

 

"Why do you need to drive? Is there are case?"

 

Dean ducked his head. There was one a few towns over, one the realtor wouldn’t make any money from but which she still asked him to handle. It could have waiting until daybreak, but Dean just; his bones ached living from too long in one rectangular suburban plot. His veins ran heavy and his shoulders were sparking with tension.

 

Castiel seemed to gather some of this, and pulled his shoulders back far enough he could put one warm hand on Dean's shoulder.

 

"Alright." He said. "This is something we should do together." And before Dean could object, he stood, walked around the front of the car and plopped himself in the passenger seat, looking out the window eagerly.

 

Dean warred within himself. He wanted Castiel to be near him and feel part of the mission. But on the other, he just needed some space to think. He needed the slow roll of other cars full of other people's troubles to pull him out of the same, never-ending, destructive and disruptive routes.

 

Castiel started talking again as Dean put the key in, and started the car. He still didn’t pull out though. He could tell Cas was waiting to say something.

 

"You know you run away when you get to feeling too trapped?” Dean froze, but kept his eyes on the road, shoulders hunching in painfully.

 

Castiel continued, “I’ve seen you do it a few times before, and thought it might happen here. You find a reason to leave, to hate the person making you feel trapped, but every single time, you run."

 

“You ran from me; you did.” Dean blanched and clenched his hands down on the steering wheel. He wanted to kick Cas out of his baby, drive away, watch him get smaller and smaller in his rearview mirror until he disappeared and all Dean had was the black road, the black sky, and the wind in his vents.

 

At the same time, he wanted to roll himself up in Cas’s arms, just wind in and in and in until he disappeared inside. So deep he wouldn’t feel this need to run, could shut his asshole of a brain down, could just be _his_. He was _here_ , he was _here for Cas_ and it wasn’t always comfortable, feeling good and welcome and normal. And now Cas couldn’t just let him have this, this one thing?

 

“You keeping me prisoner, Cas? I need to give you notice, get your permission before I go for a drive?” Castiel shook his head, shaking the sarcasm out of that statement.

 

“You don’t, but you do need to tell me if you’re coming back, and when. You and I are two parts of a whole and that keeps you tied to me,” and he got quieter, “even when you don’t want to be.”

 

Dean’s head ached to duck, to charm him out of this conversation and back into the easy thing he and Cas had been doing these past few months. He flipped off the engine and the silence was stifling. He’d been obsessing about gas usage and checking the rubber depth on his tires every day; he missed the mechanics of the road. He missed the life. He missed the road.

 

He hung his head and kept his eyes down, saying “I just need out, Cas.” Castiel’s body shocked to attention, and Dean realized how that sounded.

 

“Not out of this, or out of us, but out of that,” he gestured, “That _house_. _”_

 

“What’s wrong with our home, Dean?” Castiel said, tone flat and ready to fight.

 

“There’s nothing _wrong_ , but it’s not,” _baby, an anonymous motel room, Bobby’s._ Dean felt he needed to explain.

 

He leaned his head against the wheel, rocking his forehead over the comfortably worn plastic. His head was a hurricane, with different tacks and explanations and examples flying up and disappearing before he could get ahold of them. He decided to just start talking and see where that went:

 

“It’s too big,” Cas started to interrupt, “—and too small.” Cas cocked his head at him then sat back, face open and seeming to listen.

 

“It’s too bright and too dark. It doesn’t _move_. I have to pick things up when I leave them; I have _things that I can move_. I have to think about expiration dates and gardening and,” Dean’s breath was coming faster and faster,

 

“I don’t know how to _mow a lawn_ , Cas. I just don’t. Do you realize how fucked up that is? I’m a fully grown man, and apart from that time with Lisa, I’ve never had to live in one place for more than a month since I was 4.”

 

“Since the fire.” Castiel said.

 

“Yes, since the fire, Cas. I lived,” Dean swept his hand out over the dashboard, palm up, encompassing, “out there. I lived _away_ Cas. I wasn’t _from_. Anywhere. I get,”

 

And Dean’s voice cracked a bit,

 

“I get _bank statements_ here, Cas. I have an identity that wasn’t melted together from jacked cards. I have an _address_. And I just—“

 

He collapsed his shoulders and said the last part quietly, nearly too quiet to hear, “I just can’t deal with it sometimes, Cas. It’s just too hard. I just need to be _me_ , what I’ve always been, my same, usual, fucked up, stable-sort-of self sometimes, not this better man you seem to think I am.”

 

Castiel looked away from Dean and put his hand on the handle of the car door. He pushed it open, stepped out and away before gently closing the door behind him. Dean watched him as he walked up the front of the car, and looked away when it looked like he was going to go back into the house, too pissed to listen anymore.

 

Then Dean felt a breeze, a gust of wind, and the angel was levering him off the wheel, pushing him back into his seat with two broad hands, and sliding his knee over Dean’s hips to sit on his lap. The angel squared his shoulders and looked at Dean, before collapsing down onto him in a full-body hug. He snaked an arm behind the hunter’s back, and buried his forehead in his shoulder.

 

He said, in a harsh whisper. “You don’t need to be better Dean, you’re perfect just the way you are. You’re _good_ , Dean. _You’re good._ ”

 

Cas stayed on him, his weight settling and slowly feeling heavier and more real. Dean became more aware of his surroundings slowly, noticing the way the dawn highlighted the edge of the maple leaves hanging on to the drying branches in his neighbor’s yard; the loose way leaves flurried down the street; the smell of Cas’s clean hair and greasy shirt.

 

He saw all this around the side of Cas’s head, over his shoulder, through the sound of his soft, slow breathing and the smell of his warm body. His next breath seemed to go all the way down to his pelvis, and suddenly he couldn’t remember what had been so hard, what he’d so needed to flee from.

 

He ducked his head into Cas’s shoulder and said,

 

“You always say the nicest things, Cas.” Castiel chuckled and nudged his head into Dean’s ear.

 

“I’ll go with you,” he said, “anywhere, anytime. You have me.”

 

Dean nodded, but knew it wasn’t true, it wasn’t possible. They’d settled for Cas, because Cas _couldn’t_ handle the road life, _couldn’t_ handle moving around all the time.

 

Cas continued, “Not forever; I can’t be gone from here forever. I need my,” and Dean could _hear_ the grin, “I need my nest.”

 

Dean grinned back. “Does that make me your flock?” Castiel considered, and returned,

 

“You, and Sam. You are both my flock. I used to have a much larger flock, but you two let me be my own bird, and that is much better.”

 

Dean chucked and ran a soothing hand up Castiel’s spine, letting the knobs undulate his fingers.

 

“If I,” he started, “if I had to go, just for a little while, could you let me?” He kept his eyes in the angel’s shoulder and his voice muffled against his loose shirt.

 

“Yes.” Castiel replied. “But not for too long. I need you, Dean, I need you but I need you whole more, and I know you need to escape.”

 

Castiel reached over and closed the door, tucking his legs over the middle of the car into the passenger seat, but keeping his butt firmly planted on Dean’s legs. He turned and laid his hand on Dean’s shoulder, partly for balance but mostly for touch.

 

“So,” he said, “where do you want to go?”

 

Dean considered, peering to one side of Cas’s obstructing head and then the other. He threaded his hand under the other man’s arm to turn on the ignition and then closed his eyes briefly at the rumble and hum of the engine. Cas sat, watching him, the through the entire process.

 

Low vibrations settling Cas deeper into the V of Dean’s knees, Dean smiled and dipped his forehead down onto his shoulder. “I’m not sure where I can go with you in my lap, Cas.”

 

“I can move,” Castiel offered, but made no move to do so.

 

“Hmm,” Dean said, before switching off the ignition and wrapping his arm around Castiel, hand trailing down his lower back to the swell of his ass. “We could . . . go for a walk?” he tried.

 

Castiel hummed either to show he was listening or to agree. Dean didn’t know, so he tried again.

 

“We could . . . go for a drive, if you move a bit.”

 

Castiel sat back and looked Dean in the eyes.

 

“I’d like to go to the ocean.” The upper half of Dean’s mind barked out a laugh while Castiel smiled, but the bottom half was spiraling away, watching vistas and planes open and flicker passed, freely choosing between glaciers and deserts, mountains and valleys, sea and low, rolling hill country.

 

“But Cas, we’re 30 hours from the nearest beach.”   
  
“Well, then, Dean, we’d better get driving,” And with that, Castiel slid the rest of his weight forward, rotating until he was seated, face-forward, in the passenger’s seat. Dean laughed again, disbelievingly, a pulled out. He could take care of the realtor’s assignment next week.


	24. Chapter 24

Dean slammed his checkbook— _a fucking checkbook_ —on the kitchen table and followed its motion with his forehead. _Thunk. Thunk. Thunk_. His head went against the thin pine of the round table.

 

They were out of money. Again.

 

Dean’s retainer was bringing in some, and the house didn’t cost that much, and they were scraping by on groceries, but it was 5 days until the end of the month and he was out of cash.

 

If this was the first month this had happened, that was one thing. But it wasn’t. It wasn’t even the fifth. He had meant to show Castiel what it meant to be human, but not this kind of human. Not hand-to-mouth the way he’d lived for his entire life with Sam and Dad. Angels didn’t starve, but with Castiel suppressing his grace to keep the snapping, howling memories at bay, he did get peckish.

 

And Dean needed to eat. He lay there, with his head on the table, when he felt a presence behind him. Every muscle, every _instinct_ , begged him to flip the chair over in the speed of his escape, to yank that knife from his ankle-holster and shank whatever evil bit of nasty thought it had gotten the drop on him.

 

But he quashed these impulses, all born of a life he was trying to grow away from. He stayed still, tense but still, as Castiel’s hands settled on his hunched-over back. The angel ran them up and down the parallel flats of his spine, sides of his hands scrunching his shirt up and down. They were cool from the outside air, which smelled of the hope of Spring but still held the chill of a high natural gas bill.

 

The angel slipped his hand down to Dean’s, clasped it, and then pulled him standing. He guided him, Dean’s suddenly exhausted feet tripping over themselves, to their bedroom, and sat him on the bed. The angel kneeled, looking like a mop of hair above a lean torso with nothing much between from Dean’s bleary-eyed angle, and began to take the hunter’s shoes off. He pulled the rest of his clothes, Dean letting him but not helping in particular.

 

The angel stripped himself, and climbed on top of Dean, legs on either side of his hips, head facing their overstuffed dresser. The corner of Cas’s old scrubs from the hospital were just peaking out of their top underwear-socks-Dean-hates-sorting-laundry-so-it-all-goes-here-until-Castiel-moves-it drawer.

 

“What’s the matter, Dean?” Castiel murmured, once Dean and he had settled against each other.

 

Dean turned his head away, making eye contact with the too-close wall.

 

“It going to be a tight month again.” Castiel nodded, and Dean felt his stomach rumble.

 

“But that won’t stop us from having a nice dinner tonight,” he said, starting to get up. But Castiel wasn’t budging. He was appearing to get heavier, settling his weight down on Dean’s hips.

 

“Dean.” Castiel said. Dean breathed in, waiting for the angel to continue.

 

“Dean.” The angel said again, but kept his silence. Dean tried to breath through it, to give him the space he needed to consider.

 

Then, “Dean!” And Castiel was jumping off of him, yanking the top drawer open and pulling out first the top and then bottom of his old hospital scrubs.

 

“This will be the last month we have money problems, Dean,” He said, smiling and proud, holding out the old stained clothes. Dean cocked his head,

 

“What, Cas?” He was already going into protection made, assuming this meant Cas was having some kind of break, but Cas had never gotten so derailed he made up new facts. This could be really bad.

 

“The woman who owned these before I did, well, one of the two women, was a fraudster named Jill Hammerlog. She stole an untaxed million from her township. They’ve long since made up the money in mineral rights under the defunct library but the money still sits, waiting, for her to come and collect it under a false identity.”

 

“Using your skill as a liar and a thief, and a modicum of my grace,”—Dean flinched at this and Castiel shushed him, “We should be able to transfer that money into our account and, with careful planning and budgeting, we could live comfortable for several decades.” His smile was wide and proud, but Dean’s face was blank, small and closed.

 

“Cas, are you sure that’s something that really happened? A lot of, a lot of stuff happened just in your head when you were in the hospital.”  
  
“I did _not_ dream this up in my delirium, Dean Winchester. You will see.” And Castiel marched his warm and comfortable self out of their shared bedroom. Dean heard the scrape of Cas pulling their laptop off of the coffee table and the clunk of its unprotected legs as he set it down on the kitchen table.

 

He heart the fast-paced tap-tap-tap of fingers on the keyboard and let his head flop back down onto his pillow. He, for a moment, let himself imagine what it would be like not to have to scrounge. Just to have some breathing room, some space to think between the lines of his daily life here living in one place all of the time.

 

He felt an itch, like he used to get when he was starting a new case, or when he was a few follow-up calls from finishing-up an old one. The feeling of open-ended adventure, of possibilities unbounded by shift scheduling or rising heating costs.

 

He let his eyes drift closed, imagining what he would do if he felt a little more secure. He felt _safe_ , as safe as anyone was going to be. Sam and the angels’ plan had worked beautifully, Dick Roman was a pile of ooze, and his last trick of trying to trap his executioners in Purgatory had backfired when a mob of angels had flung his entire species back inside instead. So, he was safe, Cas was safe. Sam was taking a break from hunting, taking some of what he’d learned undercover to do some contract work for the real FBI, exposing corporations who used their power to mistreat their domestic workers.

 

Dean thought about what he would do with a little bit of extra cash. Maybe set up something like Bobby had, resources for hunters, but instead of just case-solving, immediate needs, he could help, what was that phrase the councilman he’d voted for had used: yeah, “build capacity.” He could watch the patterns and help fight them. Identify an opening to Hell and send well-trained hunters to deal with it. Have a network of well-known and well-greased motel-owners who could turn a blind eye to a hunter crashing late at night. And they could stop everyone from using bad credit cards, could help them pay hospital bills and put their kids through school and not just dump them with whatever family was willing to feed them.

 

They could make the life a _life_ and not a death-sentence.

 

Cas brought the laptop back in, set its swiftly overheating battery on Dean’s knees.

 

“Look,” he said, pointing.

 

He’d laid up a window with tab after tab with information about Hammerlog, about her cheating and school history and mental health woes (many of the tabs were breathless articles written in the local paper, including at least one incomprehensibly-enraged letter to the editor from an unbalanced Ms Hammerlog herself.) Once Dean clicked out of the final tab, he found another window, this one full of finance sheets, interest calculations, and routing numbers. Dean looked at Castiel worriedly, using his angel powers had a lot of potential for badness and it seemed like Cas had magic-hacked his way past a lot of the brute-forcing Dean would have done to get through all of the bank security.

 

There was enough money to make a go of it. Dean was turning to Castiel when the angel cleared his throat, and gestured to the screen. Dean clicked out of the last tab, not before an obnoxious pop-up flared to remind him the bank was changing holding companies, and found a budgeting website, where Castiel had inputted the numbers, their current cost of living, and a rough monthly budget.

 

If they stole Ms Hammerlog’s stolen money, they would have enough to live as they currently lived for a few decades. If they invested it or continued to work or found a way to cut more of their day-to-day expenses— _blood from a stone_ , Dean thought—they could live on it the rest of their lives.

 

Castiel still looked pleased, but a little grey around the edges. Dean rubbed a hand up and down his back, fingers rubbing into each bump and curve of his spine, pushing his warmth in past his soft shirt. Castiel leaned gratefully into Dean’s touch, shoving his head into the hunter’s collarbone. Dean made a little humming noise and moved the laptop off his lap onto the bed beside him, and nudged the angel onto him. Castiel curled over him, warm and still and breathing a little fast. Dean kept running his hand up and down the angel’s back, murmuring,

 

“You didn’t need to use them to show me; we could have done it the old-fashioned-way.”

“I don’t need to be babied all of the time, Dean. I can use my powers for some things.” Dean nodded, but didn’t say anything. He was gearing his mind up for a night of tossing-and-turning, of the creeping edges of nightmares and fear-sweat stinking up their bed. He rubbed his cheek along Castiel’s shoulder.

 

“So, what’s the plan?”  
  
“We’ll have to get Sam’s backup in case I can’t make it work, but I think we should be able to switch the names on that account and falsify the records so it appears that we have always had that account, with that amount. The bank was recently bought out by a much larger franchise and most of the old employees were laid-off. There’s no history to the place, and the records around her fortune were sketchy at best.”

 

Dean nodded, and then sat up, leaning back to shove his hand into to pocket. Cellphone freed, he thumb-texted Sam one-handed, keeping the other buried in Cas’s shirt. The angel was waffling along his shoulder, smelling him or doing his kneading-with-his-face thing, Dean didn’t know, but he let him be.

 

Living on the road, he’d known for most of his life that you can substitute food and water for not enough sleep, food and sleep for not enough water, and water and sleep for not enough food. For Castiel, touch served as both food and water, and if he didn’t care for his own internal barriers in the usual, just-let-them-the-fuck-alone way, he could substitute filling himself to the brim with positive touches to keep the badness at bay.

 

Castiel pushed in closer, hands running up Dean’s sides and Dean suppressed a shiver. Castiel _probably_ wasn’t trying to start something, was _probably_ just enjoying the feel of touch, but Dean was always hopeful. One the second sweep up, Castiel scrunched his fingers under Dean’s T and ran his calloused hands up Dean’s tender sides. Dean wriggled, but Castiel kept running them up and down, feeling his calloused catching and scraping, but Dean didn’t mind: it was proof he lived and worked and used his body, not preserving it for the sake of being museum-quality when he died.

 

The angel rearranged his legs, slipping a thigh between Dean’s two legs, nudging them apart and settling down. He rubbed his face along Dean’s chest, bristles catching on his flannel. He shoved his hands entirely under Dean’s shirt, and then let them sit, warm and warming. His breath had slowed, was matching Dean’s, and Dean’s hands drifted to his hips, thumbs making small, semi-circular motions over his belt loops.

 

“You want to get started on that, buddy?” Dean asked.

 

Castiel shook his head, nose scraping on Dean’s shirt as it passed across it. He slid lower, pushing his nose into Dean’s diaphragm. Dean’s breath hitched, lungs adjusting to the new pressure, and Castiel’s head rose further than it had before with each of Dean’s in-drawn breaths.

 

Dean finished his text and nestled his hands in the angel’s hair, letting curls meander through his fingers, rubbing his fingers until they reached his scalp. He ran his fingers back and forth, mussing the angel’s hair terribly, sticking parts of it up entirely and leaning others flat and respectable looking. Castiel chuckled into his chest and pushed his head up into the preening.

 

Dean reached his hands down and caught the hem of the angel’s shirt, pulling it up his back. Castiel could either let it get bunched and more bunched and more bunched under him, or raise himself up and help. He lifted up and helped remove his shirt. He crept his own hands under Dean’s shirt, bunching it up under him until the hunter cooperated.

 

Next were his pants, soon leaving them wrapped around each other in just their boxers, under the covers with the soft sound of the AC in the background. Dean tucked the angel’s head under his chin and hummed softly. He didn’t have a tune, didn’t have a melody, but just pushed the vibrations out of his throat, enjoying the change in sounds in the room.

 

Castiel nuzzled a bit and Dean enjoyed the closeness. There was a thin wire of tension in Dean’s shoulders, but as Cas remained still in his arms, not tensing, not shaking, Dean eased, body sinking further down into their bed. The sideways afternoon light turned their white sheets gold with acacac-grey shadows. Tiredness swept over Dean, dragging him under. Every blink was a moment longer, every open moment hazier, until Dean was asleep.

 

Castiel was still awake. He felt Dean drop off, but the sunlight filled him with warm energy. Not enough to want to get up, not just enough his mind was still whirring, slowly slowly clicking down one micro-gear at a time.

 

He’d solved a problem, that he was proud of. He moved that matrix of thoughts into the box marked “proud.”

 

He was worried with Dean about money. He moved that stiletto into a hat-box marked “worries-I’m-working-on.”

 

He itched and ached from using his powers. He could feel the walls in his maze-mind creaking, terrible thoughts hinting through their cracks, seeping under their lintels, eating into their eaves. He knew everything about Ms Hammerlog and knew exactly how they would get the money. But that didn’t meant it was a good idea, what he’d done, hacking into the little bank’s thinly-veiled backend.

 

Everything in the universe not made up of matter or its opposite is made up of waves, doubly so for an angel. Light (and a particle), sound, thought, and the connective sparks between bits fit as easily in his mind as the knowledge of all of the languages in the world fit into it. He could see it all, so clearly, when he let himself.

 

But then came times like this. He knew they would come, in nightmares or shakes or terrors or tantrums. The shapes slithering and slicing and grinding away on themselves in the coffin in his mind marked “fears-and-self-hatreds.” It wasn’t even a principal of equivalent exchange—there was nothing equal about the level of misery he went through when he reopened the doors to his powers.

 

But he still needed to. Just as Dean had swiped a tire-iron through Alistair’s head to free Castiel from his grip, though he held in and of himself the sum total of Dean’s anguished fears from Hell, he needed to be of use. Of value.

 

He rolled on his side, face brushing Dean’s arm and back sliding into the curves and swells of his side. Castiel relaxed and easily sorted his current feeling into the world-sized heart-shaped box simply labeled: “Loved.”

**Author's Note:**

> The title is a line from this piece: http://archiveofourown.org/works/712295/chapters/1317304 Which I haven't even finished yet, but which was rec-ed to me by a sister of my bosom and contained this amazing line (referring to how John was listening to Sherlock play his violin) and it was just perfect.
> 
> For folks who don't like WIPs, I have most of this written and plan to post it regularly over the next month or two.


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